Disparate
by devovitquesuasartes
Summary: Sequel to Synchronous. A devastating blow leaves the Brotherhood weakened. Clay Kaczmarek has run out of safe havens and has been torn apart from the only thing that was keeping him human. When the smoke clears, he's working for Abstergo and on a mission to find an artefact like none they've seen before.
1. Chapter 1

Clay Kaczmarek descended the winding stairs of the Atlanta den with an unpleasant phantom taste left over in his mouth from the dream he'd been having. Blades of light poured in through one of the hallway doors, exposing the dust motes in the air that bred and stayed with tenacity; one of the downsides to having airtight security. The quality of light inside was forever poor, and Clay squinted into it bad-naturedly as he scrubbed a hand over his face.

After breakfast he descended another set of stairs, this time the ones leading into the basement. He jerked his chin without smiling at the technician who was sitting at the bank of computers by the Animus and, when she failed to look up, called out a greeting.

"Huh?" Rebecca raised her head, then shook it with a wry grin when she saw him. "Back again, Kaczmarek?"

"Well if you will keep leaving the door unlocked..." He strolled over to the Animus 2.0. It was dark and cool to the touch. "Baby sleeping?"

"Yes she is."

"How long will it take to get her warmed up?"

The dark-haired girl raised an eyebrow at him before standing up and picking her way over the snake pit of cables that were wrapped heavily over the stone floor of the basement. As she passed Clay she swiftly snagged the coffee cup from his hands and took a sip, grimacing immediately.

"Ugh!" she exclaimed, handing it back to him. "I don't take sugar."

She used a single finger to flick on a bay of switches along the side of the machine, and Clay watched her quietly, meeting her gaze when she turned around. "I want five hours," he said. "Give me a warning call when I get to four and a half."

Rebecca raised her eyebrows. "Another five?" she queried. "It's only Tuesday."

"I know what day it is. Can we keep this one off the books?"

She grinned and patted his cheek as she made her way past him again, ignoring the way he flinched from the touch. "Kaczmarek, every time you come down here I get asked the same question, and every time it's the same answer. Everything goes on the books. You get your twenty hours per week and your check-up with the shrink on Sundays. They don't want anyone else ending up like..." She cut herself off, but it was too late.

An awkward silence filled the air, and the coffee in Clay's mug trembled a little.

"You used to ask me how he was doing," Rebecca said quietly.

"What's the point? The only thing that ever changes is his sheets."

"Why don't you put a hold on the Animus session for a bit, maybe go and see him? Bill's not here right now, you're not going to..."

"When does Bill _ever_ visit him?"

"When do _you_?"

Clay managed to put his coffee down without breaking the mug, and silently congratulated himself.

Almost a year had passed since the Assassins had used the information uncovered by Desmond Miles to prevent the destruction of planet Earth - though Mercury and Venus had been left ravaged and the government had suddenly sped up their Mars Reconnaissance program. It had been over a year since Desmond had last woken up, and much longer since he had last woken up as himself. The dangerous number of hours he had needed to spend inside the Animus 2.0 had taken the Bleeding Effect to extremes that not even the unfortunate test subjects at Abstergo had experienced, and Desmond had been left comatose, drifting, with no signs of recovery.

Rebecca was signing him into the system. "Clock's running, Animus is online, ready when you are." She looked up from the screen and added pointedly, "This will take you up to thirteen hours. Hope you've made other plans for the rest of the week."

It was a measure that had been put in place once the dust had settled and revealed one Assassin left permanently unconscious. Enough Pieces of Eden remained at large to make continued Animus use a priority, but measures were now taken to prevent the Bleeding Effect from reaching dangerous levels in the subjects. Even Clay Kaczmarek - unloved and untrusted as he was by the Assassins - was permitted to use the machine with the same leisure as the members who had never wavered or fled. His DNA was too valuable, and the Assassins simply couldn't afford to be picky.

He attached the wires himself and laid his head back as the HUD slid over his eyes. Rebecca said something to him right before he went under, but her voice was muffled and he was never able to figure out what had been said.

* * *

_Skip that, skip that_, Clay muttered in his head as he filtered through the memory strands. Most Assassins had to plod through all this crap methodically; he couldn't even imagine what the task might be like. He skimmed through the layers of programming like a stone across water and was able to accomplish more in five hours than most would in five weeks. Abstergo had given him that, at least.

There it was. It was a memory that he'd not paid much attention to when he'd found it the previous day, mainly because the nature of the discussion was so ambiguous, but he had been kept up last night thinking about it. Living with the Assassins again had done little to soften the contempt that Clay held for them, but he knew that William Miles was interested in Pieces of Eden, particularly in getting to them before the Templars did, and the interest was undeniably infection.

Ezio's world folded up around him and Clay gently breathed the smell of Leonardo's workshop: acrylic paints and woodsmoke, mixed in with the smell of unwashed skin that usually meant Leonardo had buried himself too deep in a project to bother with trivialities like washing. The two old friends, still quite young friends at this point in time, were sitting peacefully in front of the fire. Ezio's wrist was bare, and Leonardo was bent over the upturning casing of the open wrist blade, fixing it with a long, thin metal tool.

"Ezio, my friend, whose poor throat did you break it upon this time?" he asked, a gentle note of reproach in his voice.

Ezio grinned at him without a trace of shame. "I broke it staying a blade from my own throat. A noble cause."

"Hmmm." There was a satisfying click and Leonardo smiled, testing the mechanism on the blade. "All this death, Ezio. Do you not grow tired of it?"

"I grew tired of it long ago." Ezio's brow furrowed. "Yet somehow it seems to keep finding me."

"Ah well." Leonardo handed the wrist blade back. "Perhaps you will not need it again."

The statement didn't seem to need a response. Companionable silence filled the room.

"This talk of death," Leonardo said at last. "It reminds me of something I read in that book you gave me." He looked sidelong at Ezio, who had been allowing the warmth of the fire to lull him into the beginnings of a sleep. Now he started at the sound of Leonardo's voice and blinked sleepily.

"Book? Which book was this?"

"One from your father's collection." Leonardo was already on his feet, brushing the topmost layer of parchment from a pile on the table, then making a small sound of triumph as he found the leather-bound tome he was looking for. "It is strange. This is a memoir, written by one of your ancestors. He was also an Assassin, and much of the book is..." Leonardo laughed. "Not to insult his writing skills, but it is a little dry. Mainly a record of important assassinations, all very factual and practical. But there is this section..." He flipped to a marked page and ran his fingers over the text until he found the correct section. "Ah, yes."

Clay could feel Ezio's sleepiness, the temptation to close his eyes, but he fought to pay more attention than his ancestor had as Leonardo continued.

"It is ... You might call it a fairy tale. It tells the story of a young Assassin who was killed whilst battling for some kind of treasure ... An artefact in the form of an amulet. His body was brought back to the Assassins and his brother, grieving and angry, insisted that since the Assassin had fought for the treasure alone, it should be buried with him. The elders argued but since the dead man had won the artefact it fell naturally to his brother to choose what should be done with it.

"He placed the amulet around the dead man's bloodstained neck, and instantly his wounds vanished and he breathed again. He sat up from the pallet and kissed his brother upon the cheek, and thanked him.

"The Assassin lived on for many years, always keeping the amulet around his neck, and he married and had many children. One day he was out walking with his youngest son. He looked up into the bright blue of the sky, over the green mountains, and finally down at his child. He was overcome with joy at the life he had been given back, and he picked his son up and placed him upon his shoulders so that he could better see the view.

With the curiosity of a child, the boy toyed with the old, rotted leather of the knot holding the amulet in place. He tugged it this way and that until finally it gave way. The amulet, the man, and the child all tumbled to the ground at the same time. They were found the next day: the man bore the wounds of the battle he had died in, and the boy's neck had been broken in the fall."

Leonardo finished reading and looked up, eyes bright and affected, at Ezio, who was only partially attentive. Clay's ancestor had obviously seen the story as nothing more than a slightly disturbing tale that was keeping him from sleep, but he made an effort to look interested. "What became of the amulet?" he asked.

"Well, that is the strange thing. The bottom third of this page is torn away." He held the book up so that Ezio could see the ragged edge.

Ezio looked at the book, a slight frown upon his place, but then shrugged whatever had been troubling away, smiling. "A true mystery, my friend. Perhaps one day I too will have to fight for this magic amulet."

The conversation continued, but Clay was becoming distracted by the fire in the hearth. It smelled stronger than before, and he could feel the room warming up in a way it never had in his previous visit to this memory. He stared at the flames in puzzlement, but if anything the fire was dying down. The nasty prickle of intuition laid itself in his stomach and he tried to make Ezio stand even as he felt a sharp tug pulling him away from the memory. The Italian Assassin did not so much as raise a finger, and Clay felt his synchronisation slip and then shatter abruptly.

* * *

"... Up ... Come on, _Clay_!"

There was an incessant, shrill, deafening beeping in the air, with a much deeper thrum beneath it, both of them shaking Clay physically with their intensity. And he _was_ being shaken, dragged out of the Animus, still reeling. He unglued his mouth and said, with extreme eloquence, "Wass happening?"

Rebecca growled in frustration and, with surprising strength for such a small woman, pulled him to his feet. Yelling to be heard over the beeping sound and the drumming she said a single word: "Fire!"

Fire.

That was when Clay noticed how his eyes were stinging, that it was harder to see than usual. Smoke was curling into the room from beneath the basement door, and the air was much, much warmer than it had been. In the distance, he could hear someone screaming, but not loud enough to drown out the drumming sound, which had grown louder than the beeping, louder than anything, enough to make him wince. He glanced over at Rebecca, who was entering a code to open the alternative exit to the basement - the one that led directly up to the street - but she didn't seem to be affected by it.

Swaying on the spot, Clay covered his face with one hand, closed his eyes, and tried to focus on the deep, pulsing sound that was echoing through his head. It was becoming clearer now as he realised it wasn't a sound coming from outside, but a song within him, growing in urgency and meaning. He listened, and realised that what he was hearing was this:

_Desmond DESMOND get Desmond get Desmond DESMOND DESMOND get him get Desmond_...

Clay didn't even realise that he was running towards the stairs until he had already reached the top of them. His hand slammed onto the doorknob and sizzled.

_He's standing in the shower at Abstergo. The pipe red hot, astoundingly painful, and he feels the burning as gravity: holding him in place as he methodically rattles out a message to someone he doesn't even know, someone who might not even be able to hear and who probably won't understand..._

"_Don't!_" Rebecca screamed, ludicrously. Clay turned the doorknob, feeling the motion tug at the skin which had fused to the metal. He was greeted at the door by a wall of flame that burst through with grunt of relief and threw him all the way down the stairs, tiny flames wakening on his clothes, his spine impacting on the wooden floor before he rolled backwards into a cabinet, causing computer parts and wiring to rain down on him.

The door to their escape slid smoothly open and Rebecca was at his side, forcibly dragging him across the floor and shouting at him to _help her ou_t, for Christ's sake. She was pulling him away from the stairs, away from the fire, away from...

_NO NO NO DESMOND DESMOND GET DESMOND GET DESMOND HELP DESMOND_...

He started to fight Rebecca, weakly, and she swore at him and tightened her grip. He tried to drag his heels but the floor was too smooth and frictionless, and Clay was too injured. With a cry of effort, Rebecca yanked him out through the doorway and slammed her hand down on a button that closed the door and cut both of them off from the rest of the Den. Panic roared in Clay's chest and he braced his back against the wall, pushing himself up until he was more or less standing, and tried pressing the same button. Of course, it didn't work from this side, and Rebecca was pulling at him again.

"Clay, seriously, we don't have time for your shit right now, we have to get out!"

"Desmond," he managed at last. "We need to..."

"The door doesn't open from this side. Even if it did, there's no way you'd be able to get to him." She didn't quite meet his eyes as she added, "Maybe one of the others..."

She was saved from finishing by a deafening, wall-shaking crash that sounded that the very structure of the building was tumbling down. Dust fell from the ceiling of the small tunnel and they both simultaneously experienced an unpleasant premonition of what would happen if the roof caved in.

"OK," Clay said, inwardly amazed at how normal he sounded. "OK, let's go." He was hurt, but he perceived the injuries as though he was seeing them on another person's body, and only imagining how they might feel. Holding onto the rail for support, he dragged himself up the stairs and hit another button that was set into the wall, slumping a little in relief as he waited for the mechanised doors over their heads to open up.

The smell, which had been temporarily dulled when they'd cut themselves off from the fire, hit his nostrils before he registered the heat on his skin. The places in which he'd been burned flared up in sudden pain at the rise in temperature as he climbed out onto the pavement outside, behind a crowd of staring people who failed to notice him. They were staring open-mouthed at the building across the street, and Clay followed their gaze to a sight that crippled him, dropped him to one knee.

The Assassin Den was already a hollow shell, filled from foundations to rafters with fire that licked out from every window. A fire crew had arrived, but they were prioritising the buildings on either side in an attempt to stop the fire from spreading. They recognised that the Den was a lost cause; if there was anyone left in there now, they wouldn't be in any condition to benefit from a rescue party.


	2. Chapter 2

There was a TV mounted on the wall with the news channel running, presumably to keep the long-term patients informed of what was going on in the world. Clay fixed his eyes on the TV and did not move them even as the doctor came to sit directly in front of him, but he could clock from his peripheral vision that the attending physician was female, probably in her fifties, with her hair drawn back into an uncomfortable but practical bun.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, when he failed to greet her.

The weather report ended and the red lines and dramatic music of an important news story filled the screen, the face of the newsreader fading into a series of video feeds as the report unfolded.

"_America was devastated today by multiple suspected terrorist attacks in major cities across all fifty states_..."

"I'm fine."

The lines around her mouth deepened fractionally as she took in the bandages on his hand, arm, and chest, as well as the reddened skin on his face and the traces of soot still lingering on his clothes and hairline. "Do you remember how you got here?" she asked.

There had been an ambulance waiting, but they seemed to have given up hope of finding anyone in a condition to be helped by medical attention; whoever had set the fire had used it to block off all the ground floor exits, though of course that would make little difference to any Assassin with training. Any who might have escaped would also have known enough to flee at the sight of an ambulance, since Abstergo had operatives in every hospital in the country.

So the paramedics had seen Clay - kneeling in front of the building, too numb with horror to move - his clothes still smoking slightly and fresh glistening burns on his skin. He'd felt hands on him and then an oxygen mask on his face, people speaking to him and asking questions.

"Yes."

"That's good. Can you tell me how the fire started?"

"I don't know. I was never inside the house." The lie fell easily from his lips.

"You don't live there?" The doctor hesitated before she asked, and sounded sceptical when she did.

"No."

"_The death toll is estimated to be among the thousands, although bodies are still being recovered. The targeted properties seem to primarily be hostels, private clubs, and..."_

"I understand that the building was some kind of homeless shelter?" It wasn't a question, but she turned it into one.

"I wouldn't know. It was a fire?"

The doctor looked at him hesitantly. "Do you not remember...?"

"I remember the fire. I don't remember an explosion. So it wasn't a bombing, like those?" He nodded towards the TV.

He was simply speaking his thoughts aloud, not expecting answers. Atlanta hadn't been mentioned on the list of cities hit by the bombings, all of which were cities that had Assassin Dens. The thousands of people who had been killed must have been Assassins, at least a quarter of all the active Assassins in the USA, probably more. Yet the Atlanta Den was the only one that had been set alight instead of simply bombed, giving the Templars time to infiltrate the building during the chaos. Why? What did it have that the others didn't?

"Sir, are you listening to me?"

"No."

Well, it had the Animus 2.0, but he and Rebecca had been in the basement just before it was torn apart by the fire, and no Templar agents had come bursting in to steal it. They might have been after one of the Pieces of Eden, except that they were all with William Miles, who hadn't been there either. It had Desmond, unconscious and defenceless - the perfect kidnapping victim. It also had Clay himself, who had been left in a position to escape when the fire had started, and was now in the hands of an institution full of Abstergo eyes.

Who would know whether Desmond was still alive? There were Assassins in the local police and fire crews, he knew, but how was he to contact them? For that matter, what had happened to Rebecca? Had she been taken off in another ambulance, or fled the scene before she could be discovered? He couldn't even remember how they had become separated.

"... Keep you in for a few days, just to make sure."

"I'm leaving." Clay eased himself off the bed, the pain from his burns screaming at him from the stuffy confines of their bandages.

"Now, that's really not at all wise, please just sit down..."

"I don't have insurance. You people hate having patients with no insurance, don't you? Let me free up a bed for you." He thought about grabbing for his jacket or bag, then realised that he had neither. He had a few crumpled bills in his pocket, along with his cell phone. Nothing else. She continued protesting and he cut her off blithely. "Don't worry, I'll be fine. Keep changing the bandages, stay away from fires, right?"

He made to leave and the doctor moved firmly into his path. Clay stepped around her and she did the same thing again, as though they were engaging in a very angry, awkward dance. "I don't think you realise..."

"Get out of my way," Clay said softly. "Or I will kill you."

She wasn't a Templar, that much was instantly obvious from the way her mouth dropped open in shock. He stepped around her and kept walking, searching until he found a small back door that was only meant to be used in the event of...

He pushed down the metal bar and slammed his way through, the alarm ringing in his ears as he walked briskly away from the building.

Clay was about two blocks away when the lingering thought of fire and the deep, throbbing pulse that was Desmond connected to form a hideous hybrid image. He calmly detoured into an alleyway, and when he was concealed from view he dug his fingernails into the brick wall and vomited through his mouth and nose until there was nothing left to come up.

_If Desmond is dead_, he thought,_ I will kill every Templar I can find until they manage to kill me_. The latter thought didn't disturb him at all. That plan arranged, he spat and then wiped his face with the back of his hand, straightened up, and headed for the nearest police station.

* * *

"I'm here to confess to murder."

The desk sergeant, a tired-looking African-American woman who did not seem particularly impressed by this statement, eyed him up. "Uh-huh. Who'd you murder, sweetie?"

"Lots of people. I'm an Assassin."

"Can you give me any names? I don't suppose you were the second gunman on the grassy knoll; that one's had us stumped for a while."

Clay hesitated, clenching and unclenching his fists on the lacquered wood of the desk. Behind him was a waiting room filled mainly with junkies, furious-looking parents, and old ladies who were probably here to get their young neighbours arrested for listening to music too loudly.

"What's wrong with you?" he demanded at last. "I just walked in and straight-up confessed to a crime. You don't even have to do any work here, just shove me in an interrogation room and get me a homicide detective." He paused. "Just be sure to tell them I'm an Assassin. So they know what they're dealing with."

A shrill, quavering voice from behind him cried out indignantly, "While you stand there yapping, young man, my poor cat has been kidnapped by people who don't know about his allergies and are probably feeding him one of the fifty-six kinds of store-bought cat food that can kill him instantly."

The desk sergeant raised her eyebrows at him. "You hear that? You're wasting my time while some poor kitty's life hangs in the balance."

Clay stared at her open-mouthed, then asked, "Who do I have to kill around here to get arrested?"

Waving over a younger officer, the sergeant replied, "I don't know, but if you're real desperate then feel free to start with my mother-in-law." To the young police officer she said, "We've got a possible witness for that arson case over on 34th street. Could you put him over in room six for me?"

The truth dawned on Clay even before the desk sergeant winked faintly at him and tucked in the ring finger of her left hand. Fighting to keep from rolling his eyes in frustration, he responded to the hand on his shoulder and allowed the cop to lead him into the interrogation room.

It was not a pleasant wait. Adrenaline, pain, and fear had thus far kept Clay from having enough time to properly reflect on the situation, but now with the long minutes of sitting in silence and loneliness on a hard plastic chair, it all came back. He began by trying to remember the last time that he had even seen Desmond, and his stomach turned emptily as he realised that it must have been at least a fortnight, maybe more. He didn't even have Bill Miles' limp excuse of being too busy; he'd found himself listless and wandering the halls and rooms of the Assassin Den, searching for something to do once he'd filled his quota of Animus time for the book. He had read books and forgotten their content as soon as he had finished them. He'd been on small, local scouting missions. He had done everything he could think of, because he couldn't handle going into that room again.

He looked up sharply as the door opened and the desk sergeant entered. She closed the door behind them and the desk sergeant leaned against it, to keep an ear out for people approaching.

"How many got out?" he asked immediately.

"You were there when the fire happened?" she countered.

"What, you think I got these doing some kind of circus act?" He raised a bandaged arm.

The desk sergeant looked coolly at the burns, then back into his face. "If you want a rough estimate, we could try subtracting the number of bodies from the total number of people who were living in that Den." For the first time, he saw sadness in her face. "I imagine it's quite a small number. I haven't been able to get through to any of my regular contacts, or to any of the numbers I have for Masters in other cities. I'm doing what I can here but ... Abstergo have torn a hole in the Brotherhood. I don't know if we can recover..."

"I could give a rat's ass about the Brotherhood," Clay interrupted brutally. "Did you find Desmond Miles' body?"

She had bristled at his tone, but the desk sergeant seemed to understand that protesting wouldn't do any good. "I managed to get into the building after the fire was put out. I still haven't heard from Bill, but I knew that he'd want to know about his son, so..."

"So...?"

"So I checked the infirmary first. There were about thirty bodies in total. Just one in the infirmary."

Clay felt a very real and physical pain inside his chest, and struggled for a moment to stay upright. All of a sudden it seemed as though his breathing had grown louder, deafening, a screeching counterpart to the mental image that came unbidden, of Desmond still prone on the hospital bed but charred and blackened...

"Here's where it gets interesting. First of all, the body was in the doorway, not on the bed. Second, the person died of bullet wounds, not of asphyxiation or burns."

Slowly, the world started to return and the darkness began to clear from Clay's vision. Speaking carefully, not quite trusting his own voice, he asked, "Who...?"

"Dental records identified the body as Shaun Hastings."

Clay turned this over in his mind. The bullets almost certainly confirmed his theory about Abstergo using the fire as a distraction, so that no one would realise their true goal. He also took a moment to think about the fact that Shaun Hastings - _the_ Shaun Hastings, who Clay had once punched squarely the face for a comment about Desmond being "a lot more tolerable" whilst comatose - had gone back to try and help him, had even given up his life in the attempt, while Clay had fled like a rat from a sinking ship.

Everything he had learned coalesced in his mind and a decision was made instantly. He stood up and walked briskly over to the door.

"Woah, woah, woah!" For the second time that day, Clay find his path blocked. The desk sergeant glared at him. "You're not going anywhere. We need to stick together. You're the only other Assassin I've been able to make contact with since the attacks..."

"I'm not an Assassin."

The desk sergeant stared at him for a second as though she was working something out, then exasperation crossed her face. "You're Kaczmarek, right? Yeah, I've heard about you. Well, you're going to have to deal with your little attitude problem later on, because..."

It was obvious that she was only planning to slow him down further, and that was unacceptable. Conscious of the need to keep things quiet, Clay whipped his fist up and slammed it into the side of her head, before immediately wrapping a hand around her throat to prevent her from making any noise. Her hands swiped at his face as he bore her to the ground, but he ignored them and the blows soon began to weaken. Within a minute he felt her body shudder into unconsciousness and he eased the hand off her neck and sat back a little. Clay contemplated killing her but decided that it would take too long. He was gone before anyone realised what had happened.

* * *

The fires were out but the rubble hadn't yet been cleared. All across America were cities blackened holes where buildings used to be, and a large number of ordinary civilians had been taken out along with the Assassins. There had also been individual executions of major Assassins who were in the field - taken out by sniper bullets from half a mile away. The USA had previously held the third largest number of Assassins of any country in the world, but now less than half of them remained alive.

Needless to stay, there was an excellent mood pervading the walls of Abstergo Industries.

Ted wore an ordinary security uniform - as opposed to the white clothing of most of Abstergo's guards - because he worked at the front door. It had been a quiet day when a man with blonde hair and bandages all up his arms and blistering burns on his face walked calmly towards the building and stopped right outside the door.

Ensuring that one hand was close to the butt of his gun, Ted pushed the door release button and stepped outside. "Can I help you, sir?" he asked, putting a slight emphasis on the last word as he took in the stranger's bedraggled appearance and the burn marks on his clothes.

"My name is Clay Kaczmarek. I worked for the Assassins. Take me to Warren Vidic."


	3. Chapter 3

There had been occasions - at least a couple - when Clay had questioned what they had. When Desmond had found him at Abstergo there had been little left but the aching void of madness that Clay could feel even now, merely a discreetly-closed curtain away from retaking his mind. There had been nothing, and then there had been Subject Seventeen - a warm point of interest and intrigue to which the tatters of Clay Kaczmarek clung as though it were a small island in the middle of a cold and raging sea. Perhaps it didn't matter that it was Desmond. Perhaps Clay had simply imprinted his desires on the first person to offer him a way out.

He would think, with cruelty, that there was nothing very special about Desmond after all. He had both the Assassins and the Templars chasing after him, but that was merely an accident of his DNA. He was moderately intelligent, but no genius. He was good-looking, yes, but good-looking people were not that difficult to come by. He was hard-working when he had no choice, a shirker in all other situations, and had a maddening tendency towards bull-headed stubbornness.

These thoughts would come in the long hours that Clay had spent waiting for Desmond to return from his Animus sessions. He would feel a cold front creeping over his mind and threatening to leave him clinical and brutal and uncaring. But at the end of each day he would see Desmond again, feel that bloom of warmth somewhere deep in his chest, and all his questions from earlier would be resolved with one simple thought that sounded something like, '_Oh, right_.'

Because this was Desmond. Desmond, who could have escaped Abstergo on his own but had instead gone back for Clay and nearly been recaptured for his efforts. Clay recalled the first time he'd really seen him and known him - shivering his ass off in an oversized hockey jersey with a _penguin_ on it and looking awkward and apologetic and just a little bit smug at having effected a successful double breakout. That same night, Clay had felt Desmond's palm resting warmly over his heart and realised - though it was months before they would even so much as kiss - that he'd finally found someone he'd be willing to die for. A switch had simply flipped somewhere in his brain and quite suddenly Desmond had become utterly essential.

"I want to see him," Clay said to Warren Vidic.

He was in Vidic's office, flanked by guards, trying to hide his satisfaction at the still-misshapen angle of Vidic's nose that Desmond had left as a parting gift. There was a generally lumpy quality to his complexion now that the beard couldn't quite conceal, and Clay would guess that he had a small handful of false teeth where the originals had been broken. He had been taken to a large room that must be Vidic's office, though there were no photographs or keepsakes on the desk. A large screen was set into the wall on the left, and the window that made up an entire wall gave a stunning view of the city that Clay had no interest in.

Vidic looked at him for a few long seconds. "I presume you're talking about Desmond Miles." It wasn't a question, so Clay didn't respond. Vidic smiled wolfishly. "I'm glad to see you survived our little visit, by the way."

"Is he alive?"

"Of course. If I wanted him dead then we would have simply bombed your little hideout like we did with the rest of them."

"Prove it. Let me see him."

If Vidic objected to being given orders, which he surely did, then he was controlled enough not to let it show. Or maybe he couldn't make his emotions display on the wreck of his face any more. He tapped at a keyboard on his desk and within seconds the screen on the wall switched from a generic screensaver to a security camera feed.

_Oh. Right._

They'd put him back into the Animus, probably the same one he'd used originally. Clay felt a strong urge to go up the screen, to touch the image of Desmond, but a simple twitch in that direction had a guard resting a firm hand on his shoulder to hold him back.

"You won't be able to make him use it," Clay said at last, keeping his voice neutral. "His father tried, but after he unlocked that final clue to building the shield, his mind just shut down and refused to interact with the Animus."

Vidic shut the feed off and the screensaver returned. "That's a fair bit of information that you just volunteered," he murmured, a little hungrily.

"Nothing compared to what I'm willing to give you. What I'm willing to do for you."

The words hung in the air heavily. Even the two guards exchanged a glance, the brush of their hair on the uniform collars audible in the silence.

"And what," Vidic asked slowly, "are you willing to do for us?"

Clay gave him the ghost of a grin. "The real question is, what can you do to earn it? You must have known that Desmond was in a coma when you kidnapped him, but you went to a lot of trouble and expense to do it anyway. Can you help him?"

"Naturally. You Assassins may like to play it safe with the Animus technology, but we use hundreds of these machines daily to train our agents. It's the same principle upon which we operate the pharmaceutical business that keeps us afloat; once we develop a virus or disease, we induce it within as many test subjects as it takes until we perfect an antidote. Mr Miles is by no means the first person I've seen fall into a coma from prolonged Animus use, and we have a simple program to reverse the damage and wake him up. It may need some tweaking for this ... extreme case, but it shouldn't take long."

Clay tried not to let his expression change, but the cool façade that he'd allowed to overtake him was threatened with a flood of hot emotion at the thought of Desmond, finally awake and finally himself once more. They could be together again, and Desmond would be free of the pressures that had tied him to the Assassins.

"With that in mind," Vidic continued with a smirk. "I believe you mentioned that you were willing to do something for us."

"Anything," Clay corrected. "I just spent over a year living with the Assassins, and I can tell you everything I learnt, both from them and from the Animus."

Vidic laughed mockingly. "In case you haven't noticed, Subject Sixteen, we just obliterated half of the Brotherhood with very little help from you."

"Make me a Templar then. I'll work for you. I'll kill for you. I'll do whatever you want, and all you have to do is let Desmond go."

Vidic looked somewhere between taken aback and positively gleeful. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk, and stared into Clay's face. "My, my. I almost wish we had a chopping block here, so that you could lay your head on it and complete the metaphor."

Clay stared at Vidic's nose and kept his voice cold. "If that's what you want, so be it. But my condition stands."

It felt like a great weight had been lifted from his chest, now that it was done, and he was dizzy with the possibilities that Vidic's words had opened up to him. He would have been content to go back to the wretched existence of the past year, of simply staying by Desmond's side and protecting him while waiting for consciousness that might never come. The idea that the Templars might be able to fix Desmond and make him whole again, so that Clay could finally hear his voice again, hold him and feel him actually fucking _respond_, was astonishing, almost too good to be true.

"You overestimate your value to us, Subject Sixteen," Vidic said at last. "In fact, you insult us with the mere suggestion that we would ever allow you into the Templar fold. You don't believe in our ideals or goals and you have no love or loyalty for the Templars, just as you had no loyalty to the Assassins, or to anyone except for your precious prized vegetable. You come crawling to me, a filthy traitor to your own people, and you expect me to treat your so-called 'services' like they're worth anything more than the toilet paper I used to wipe my ass this morning."

Clay gave him a grin full of teeth. "You know, Warren, it's not healthy to hold back like this. Tell me how you really feel."

"You're very confident for a man who just walked into his own execution."

"If you were going to kill me then you would have done it already. That was a cute little speech you just made, Warren, but we both know that you're about to make a counter-offer. Get on with it and stop wasting my time." Of course Clay had known that they wouldn't just let Desmond go, not after all the trouble they'd gone to in order to retrieve him. He'd made that huge request so that they'd relent to smaller ones. If he could only protect Desmond until he figured out a way to get them both out of this mess, then that would be enough.

Clay now wondered if he had made a mistake by speaking so brazenly; Vidic now looked completely blank, which probably meant that he was livid. "We may be able to find some use for you," he said at last.

"Good."

"You know, of course, that we never have any intention of releasing Mr Miles. He's far more valuable to us than you'll ever be."

"Then what are you prepared to offer?"

Vidic smirked. "If you cooperate fully, and do not double cross us, then we will revive him from his coma."

There was a moment where Clay forgot how to breathe. Then he said, in as a calm a voice as he could muster, "You were going to do that anyway."

"Yes. We were."

"So you'll wake him up whether I work for you or not. I'm not seeing a whole lot of carrot in this situation."

Vidic grinned wider than ever before. "That may be the case, but let me assure you that I have a considerable amount of _stick_."

Now there was a horrible, horrible mental image that Clay would never be able to get out of his head.

"Right now, the only thing you are bartering for is how comfortable we make Desmond's stay at Abstergo." Vidic opened one of his desk drawers and pulled out a folder as he continued to speak casually. "For example, I was considering having both of his legs amputated as a precautionary measure. Perhaps his arms too, to be safe. He doesn't need his limbs to operate the Animus. So, now that we have an understanding, would you kindly take a look at this."

He pulled a plastic envelope containing a tattered scrap of paper in it across the table. "Now, I know you haven't seen this before," Vidic continued, adopting a 'kindly teacher' voice. "But perhaps you can tell me where it comes from."

The contents of the envelope had clearly been thick parchment at some point, but age had rendered the torn scrap to a wafer thinness, and the ink was faded to a dull brown against the yellow. It was written in Latin, and while Clay recognised a few words he was unable to read the passage in its entirety. The edges were ragged, the top and right edge especially so, so it must have been torn out of a book.

"This came from a book belonging to the Auditore family," Clay said said at last. "I saw it in one of Ezio's memories. This passage is the conclusion to some fairy tale about a magic amulet that brings the dead back to life." He looked up at Vidic. "Since the Templars stole it, I'm guessing it's not just a fairy tale."

"Very good," Vidic said, still speaking in an unsettlingly friendly voice for someone who had just threatened to turn Desmond into a quadruple amputee on a whim. "Though much of what was in the book was the result of tasteless redecoration on the part of story-tellers, the amulet does exist, and we believe that it is one of the Pieces of Eden. It was once acquired by the Assassins, or at least by the group who would eventually come to call themselves that, but it hasn't been seen since before the birth of Jesus." He smirked. "Or perhaps around thirty years after, if you listen to some of our more excitable researchers."

Clay looked at the scrap of paper again, trying to spot any locations that he recognised in the spidery script. "Right. And since the Templars generally suck at finding these things, you want me to go and look for it."

The smile slithered off of Vidic's face and a crack appeared in his carefully constructed mask.

"Oh come on, Warren. I've spent a lot of time in the Animus, and things always go the same way: the Assassins find a Piece of Eden, and then the Templars show up to steal it from them once all the hard work is done. It's almost like whoever hid these things didn't want you getting your hands on them."

"You're showing a surprising amount of loyalty to the people that you're helping to stab in the back."

Clay shrugged nonchalantly. "Just making an observation. I have no particular preference about where the Pieces of Eden end up or what they're used for - take over the whole goddamn world with them if it'll make your dick feel any bigger, but Desmond Miles is mine."

From the beginning of their conversation, it had been clear that Vidic wasn't completely convinced. Up until a few seconds ago, it had been clear from the lift of his eyebrow, from his frequent glances to the guards on either side of Clay, that he suspected some kind of Assassin trick. Now, however, he looked like a kid who had put a tooth under his pillow and found a hundred dollar bill the next morning.

"Well," he murmured. "How romantic."

"I prefer to think of it as psychotically overprotective."


	4. Chapter 4

**Introductory note:** This chapter is slightly later than usual due to the sheer amount of research that's required when you send a character into a real-life ongoing conflict. I was surprised by how much of the game's story is based on fact; until I began writing this I wasn't even aware that Masyaf was a real place, let alone that the Assassins were also real and really did use the castle as a stronghold during their prime. Oh, Ubisoft, you bunch of history geeks.

* * *

_Desmond kneeled and rested his shoulder against the butt of his sniper rifle as he turned his head to light a cigarette, the flickering yellow from the match briefly illuminating the green camouflage paint on his face. He sucked in a lungful of tobacco and then exhaled it whilst shaking the flame out as Clay watched from the corner of small, dark eyrie of a room. Desmond was even wearing a strip of dark fabric tied around his head to complete the Vietnam movie image, and he kept the cigarette in his mouth as he lay down on his stomach, propped up on his elbows so that his back presented itself as a smooth curve flattening out towards his tailbone, and peered through the scope of the rifle. He bent one of his knees a little, the black boot scuffing along the dusty floor._

_He ignored Clay, as he always did. It had been this way ever since Desmond had stopped waking up as himself; ever since Clay's best efforts had universally failed to make Desmond recognise him. Not even in dreams was he able to find a measure of escape from their estrangement._

_Desmond's radio squawked with some inaudible message and he took a hand off the trigger in order to press a button on it and whisper a reply. "I have the target in my sights."_

_Sadly, knowing he would go unheard, Clay murmured, "Oh, hell."_

_Desmond returned his hand to the trigger and squinted, the rifle moving in tiny increments as he followed the movement of some unseen person on the ground. "Got you, you fucker," he muttered with a grimace that might have been a smile. "Templar bastard."_

_Finally finding the energy to move, Clay pushed himself off of the wall and walked over to Desmond, kneeling down beside him and experimentally resting a hand on his shoulder. Desmond didn't move, of course, or even acknowledge Clay's presence. His skin felt cold and immovable even through the thick khaki shirt._

_Clay looked down through the window, following the line of the rifle, down to the ground below. The man on the ground was the mirror image of himself, and though the face seemed harder and crueler than Clay's own, perhaps that was what he looked like after all. He was standing in front of a crowd of people - men, women and children, crying, holding onto each other - as Not-Clay casually fired shotgun rounds into them. Often he would kill people outright, but just as frequently one of the victims would simply jackknife to the ground as one of their legs went spinning away, or fall clutching at a gaping hole in their stomach._

_Desmond's cigarette had burned down almost to the filter, a grey snake of ash hanging from the end of it. Desmond wasn't even inhaling, he seemed to have forgotten it was in his mouth. All his focus was on the gun and man, and his finger was tightening on the trigger..._

There was a tray with a beautifully prepared steak meal in front of Clay when he awoke, and it was stone cold. He ate it anyway, barely pausing to chew, knowing that he would need all the energy he could get in the days to come.

He'd been supplied with a backpack full of supplies, a fake passport, and a seat on one of Abstergo's private planes, and found himself shipped off within hours of his meeting with Vidic. It was unnerving how quickly the Templars had managed to put this plan together, but Clay was more troubled by the fact that he was flying in this kind of comfort after he had essentially busted down Abstergo's door and begun making demands. Was this display of luxury designed to lure him in? Despite what Vidic had said, did the Templars view him as ideal recruitment material: a monster in the making, or perhaps already made, and simply awaiting a leash?

The pilot announced over the intercom system that they would shortly be landing in Hama; a quick glance out of the window confirmed that they were finally flying over land once more. Clay had in his lap a rushed-together report of the situation in Syria that more or less explained why Vidic had decided to send a renegade Assassin on this mission instead of risking valuable Templar agents. While Clay had been oblivious to the outside world, locked up tightly in an Animus experimentation suite in Abstergo, tensions in Syria had come to a head and the entire country was now embroiled in a brutal civil war between the Syrian Army and a legion of rebels cobbled together from a number of religious and paramilitary groups. Tens of thousands were dead, hundreds of thousands had fled the country, and amidst the chaos crime was running rampant.

_Perfect place for a goddamn treasure hunt_, Clay thought bitterly.

Masyaf, former home of the _Ḥashshāshīn_, had been adopted as a base of sorts by the Syrian Free Army, who presumably saw romance in its history and thought it a fitting symbol for the opposition. It was more of a refugee camp than a military compound however, its population swollen by civilians whose homes had been destroyed in the conflict, and the SFA forces were mainly concentrated within the castle walls.

Despite this, Masyaf had been blessedly spared from major destruction so far, presumably because it was small and remote enough to fall under the radar. This was a blessing because it was to Masyaf that Clay was being sent. Also inside the report was a copy and translation of the final fragment of the amulet story.

_No sign of the Piece was there, save_

_For two feathers, which lay twixt man_

_And child. One golden and soiled with_

_Blood. The other black and white_

_And soiled with greed._

"Are you kidding me?" Clay had demanded disbelievingly when Vidic had first told him. "Fucking feathers? That's all we have to go on?"

"It's _poetry_, Subject Sixteen. Symbolism. Not that I expect you to have an appreciation for either concept. The black and white feather, we believe, represents a 12th century criminal whose name roughly translates as 'The Magpie', due to a fashionable practice amongst criminals of the time, who would train those birds to steal jewellery from houses with unlocked windows. The golden feather, of course, represents the Assassins." His lip had curled on the last word. "It would seem that the Magpie attempted to rob the death scene, only to be accosted by a member of the Brotherhood. The blood on the eagle feather ... well, I'm sure you can work out who the victor was."

"So the Magpie stole the amulet and, what, hid it somewhere?"

"That's what we want you to find out."

* * *

The comfort ended when Clay landed. Templar agents working at the military air base streamlined his way through security, but Vidic had made it quite clear that Clay would be on his own once he hit the streets. His blonde hair and pale skin meant that he inevitably stood out among the populous, so his cover story was that he was a relief aid worker tied to one of the groups that had recently been permitted to enter the country. Clay had been given basic medical training during his induction into the Assassin brotherhood, and he had a small selection of bandages and medicine in his scuffed backpack. On the sleeve of his shirt was a white patch with a red cross upon it that would, with any luck, protect him from too much hostility. Despite the necessity for it, however, Clay hated the alternative implication of the cross. He could claim indifference to the Templar agenda until he was blue in the face, but he couldn't shake a feeling like he was walking around with a fucking swastika on his arm.

Thankfully the military base was located just west of Hama, meaning that Clay wouldn't have to pass through the city on his journey to Masyaf. Stepping out onto the long, straight road that would take him to his destination, he felt the sun beating down upon his face and thought about the twenty-five mile hike that lay ahead. A tank rolled past him, on the way to the military-controlled city, and Clay thought about flying bullets and hidden landmines, burnt-out houses and scorched children, about trying to find a way between the clash of two armies that wouldn't get him killed.

Then he thought about Desmond.

Clay started walking.


	5. Chapter 5

It was never just about the sex.

That much was clear, since for the longest time Clay hadn't bothered to hope that sex would ever be on the cards. The first night in the motel room might have carried a hint of promise, but it might just easily have been about the lack of proper heating. Having had his heart broken in the past, then kept in such isolation that relationships of any kind become an alien concept, Clay took any feelings of that nature that he might have had towards Desmond, crushed them down into a tiny cube and shoved them into the corner of a mental box so that they wouldn't interfere. If things hadn't turned out the way that they had, Clay would still be walking down this road in Syria, betraying the only family he'd ever known for the thin hope of saving his friend from worser torments.

No, the sex wasn't the reason. Clay was here because he'd never met anyone else in his entire life - save, perhaps, for Bill Miles and his father-figure potential - for whom he would willingly give up everything. Perhaps it was something in the Miles blood, but to Clay it seemed more coincidence than anything. Whereas Bill had simply manipulated as easily as, well, as easily as _clay_, there had simply been something about Desmond that begged for preservation, like the last member of a dying species.

Clay would have killed for Bill Miles' approval, but he'd have started his own human slaughterhouse if it put a half-smile on Desmond's face.

So, no. It was never just about the sex.

But if it had been...

That first awful fantastic soaking goddamn wet encounter in the rain, where Desmond had kissed him so hard that he'd smacked the back of Clay's head into a brick wall, only for any pain to be immediately drowned out by an internal chorus of, "_oh God, yes_" - that was only the start. In the months they'd spent at the Atlanta Den, Desmond had been absolutely ravenous for it, and he'd picked up and perfected the mechanics of sex with men impressively quickly, whilst never losing the drive to learn more. Clay had, at first, been a little stunned by the attention, but it was difficult to remain self-conscious with Desmond so naked and open and unashamedly wanting. Clay grew drunk on the joy of pleasuring someone else this much, so much so that his own ecstasy would often creep up on him. If it _had_ just been about the sex, then this might well have been the sex to die for.

Perhaps that was why it had almost killed him in those hideous moments when Desmond began to forget himself. Then, later, when he began failing to recognise Clay at all, and those eyes which had once looked at him with such fascination grew blank and puzzled, only mildly curious at best. Then the coma came, and the man who had once been able to tell how good Clay's day had been merely by the lift of his shoulders became about as responsive as a fucking corpse.

"You're an asshole," Clay muttered to himself, as the harsh haze of the sun forced that ugly thought to ooze out of the shrivelled, blackened cracks in his brain. "You're a selfish fucking asshole, Kaczmarek."

He was five miles in and regretting his decision to try and preserve the water in his pack. He thought about the plane, with its practically unlimited supply of clean running water in the onboard bathroom, and cursed himself for not taking on as much of it as possible, turning himself into a human-camel hybrid in preparation for the journey. It felt like any moisture that might have been in his body had now escaped and was comfortably being soaked up by his shirt, particularly under his arms and on his back. The heat of the sun was absolutely agony on the burns he'd endured during the fire, and the skin which had been spared was probably now turning red in solidarity.

There were twenty miles to go. Clay almost wished someone would shoot at him, if only to give him reason enough to stop walking.

"Ahlan! Lahda men fadlek!"

Clay stopped walking.

Like some kind of bizarre optical illusion, a piece of the landscape by the side of the road slid and shifted before reforming as a Jeep. Five men in Syrian army uniforms materialised from beneath the camo netting, one of them walking slowly towards Clay with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder. He stopped about two feet away, his eyes hard and his mouth almost entirely concealed beneath a thick moustache, and then began speaking in rapid-fire Arabic.

Clay attempted to parse through what was being said. He did speak Arabic, a lingering side-effect from his time spent as Malik in the Animus, but he spoke a twelfth century version of it. This was roughly the equivalent of Chaucer trying to follow an episode of _Friends_.

"Takalam bebot' men fadlek?" he asked carefully. "Lughati al arabic laisat kama yajib." _Please speak more slowly, my Arabic is not good._

The soldier glowered but complied, speaking more deliberately. "You are..." Then a word that sounded like _inglizia_.

"American," Clay replied in English (of course, Malik had had no word for this). "United Nations," he added, putting deliberate weight into the words.

"Peacekeeper?" It might have been his imagination, but Clay thought he detected a hint of sarcasm in the word.

"Medic."

The soldier nodded at this, looking neither pleased or displeased. "Sergeant Fadel," he said shortly, then continued with something that Clay wouldn't quite follow.

After an expectant pause he tapped his chest and said, "John Turner." It was the name on his fake passport.

Fadel shook his head irritably, then said something about ... a knee?

"Knee?" Clay repeated hesitantly.

Another angry shake of his head, but Fadel was only speaking faster in his irritation. "Man ... one ... help."

"You want me to ... help one of your men?"

"Man ... knee ... one!" Fadel gave up, cursed, unslung the gun from his shoulder and poked the barrel of it into Clay's back, more to guide him towards the Jeep than as any particular threat.

Clay swallowed, feeling the dry texture of his tongue and wishing he could take a drink without looking like he was going for a gun, then walked steadily towards the truck. Six dark eyes watched him mistrustfully as he approached, but the eyes of the man in the front passenger seat were closed. Six feet from the truck, Fadel indicated with the barrel of his rifle that he wished Clay to stop, then walked around him and opened the door of the Jeep.

Clay stared. _Ah_, he thought. _Knee_.

The soldier's trouser leg was torn off right up to the crotch, though it seemed feasible that the flesh had simply burst forth through the material. His leg ended in a messy, ragged stump just above the knee - obviously the result of an explosive rather than an amputation - and the rest of the limb was swollen horribly and an unpleasant shade of purple-black. The soldier's face was completely grey, and he was emitting a low, constant groaning sound as he clutched his stomach with one hand and used the other to ineffectually bat at the flies that were laying eggs in his wound.

In his backpack, Clay had aspirin, cotton wool, some gauze and bandages, medium strength antibiotics, morphine, water purification tablets, a bottle of antiseptic, some adrenaline and insulin shots, and antibacterial lotion - all of which fit into a box smaller than the size of this man's engorged, festering stump of a leg. He might not be a real doctor, but he could see which way this was going. He began speaking to Fadel slowly, using English words where he didn't know the Arabic.

"Can you get this man to a hospital? In under six hours?"

Fadel's moustache twitched. "That won't be possible."

"He's going to die."

The other soldiers were watching them silently. Fadel put a hand on Clay's shoulder and guided him away from the road and the Jeep.

"I know he is going to die," he said, when they were out of earshot. "Can you give him something for the pain?"

"I have morphine."

"We have been here for almost a day. We cannot afford to stay any longer, and we cannot move Bakir when he is in this condition."

Clay nodded, understanding. "I have a _lot_ of morphine."

In the end he decided not to waste it. He turned his back and mimed filling a syringe with the liquid, but all that he injected into Bakir's veins was oxygen. The air bubbles reached the man's heart and he stopped groaning, instead releasing a long, sad sigh as he died. Clay glanced around to see if anyone had caught on to the deception, but the soldiers were several feet away, watching as Fadel began to dig a shallow grave.

* * *

His story was that he had been caught up in a firefight, resulting in the burns on his face, arms and chest, and afterwards found himself separated from the UN group that he'd been attached to. Fadel seemed to accept this, but at first gave no explanation for why he and his men had isolated themselves so far away from the Syrian army.

"You will stay with us," he said, making it clear that there would be no argument. Clay, of course, argued anyway.

"That's not possible. I'm a non-partisan civilian, and I have somewhere that I need to be."

Fadel scowled. "Where is that?"

Clay hesitated for half a second, then replied, "Masyaf."

The glower cleared from Fadel's face. "We can take you there. Our destination is the same."

"That doesn't seem smart. Four guys going up against about a thousand Free Army soldiers."

"We're not going there to fight. We are..." Fadel used a word that Clay didn't recognise. The Assassins hadn't had a word for this back in the twelfth century, but Clay guessed at the closest word he knew.

"You're deserters?"

"_Defectors_," Fadel snapped defensively.

Clay nodded and looked over at the mound of dirt that now covered Bakir's body. It was true that he'd much rather travel to Masyaf by car than on foot, but he had to question the wisdom of showing up with a group of enemy soldiers, when his plan had been to ingratiate himself with the Free Army upon arrival. He considered the option of walking another twenty miles before it got dark, and quickly nodded.

"Alright, I'll come with you. But I don't have a gun and I won't fight if we're attacked."

Fadel closed his eyes, then drew a pair of sunglasses from his pocket and put them on. "Everybody fights in the end."

They climbed into the Jeep, and made it about another ten miles up the road - a mere fifteen minutes from Masyaf if they'd continued on that way. When the first bullet tore into their front wheel and the vehicle began to slide on the asphalt, Clay decided that perhaps walking might not have been a bad idea after all.


	6. Chapter 6

The gunfire popped and rattled, drowning out the sound of Fadel's swearing as he struggled to regain control of the Jeep, and Clay felt knuckles lash across his cheek as one of the other soldiers flailed for something to hold onto. They had been passing through a ragtag collection of houses too chaotic to be called a town, and the Jeep's long slide across the asphalt came to an abrupt halt when the right side wheels collided with a low wall, causing the whole thing to flip sedately onto its side.

It was probably this landing that saved them, as the maze of pipes and tanks that constituted the underside of their truck became a temporary shelter from the deadly metal flying through the air at him. Dimly, Clay realised that one of the men had been struck in the neck and had clamped a hand over the wound whilst weakly using the other to wrestle the rifle from his shoulder.

"Help him!" Fadel barked, resting his gun on the side of the Jeep and firing blindly in an attempt to quell the attackers.

Clay's backpack had been landed beside him in the crash. He pulled a wad of gauze out of it, pried the soldier's fingers from the bullet wound and quickly slapped the white material onto the tattered mess there, pressing down hard. Of Fadel he asked, "Are they your people?"

Fadel paused before answering to peer around the bonnet of the Jeep and fired off a few rounds. Pulling back again as a bullet hissed past his face, he snapped, "What do you mean?"

"Are they military or rebels?"

Fadel looked at him disgustedly. "They are shooting at us! Does it matter?"

"If they're shooting at your uniforms then it means they're rebels! They're on your side!"

The sergeant glanced down at his bleeding comrade. "It would seem not," he said simply, before diving back into the firefight.

It occurred to Clay, as he kept his head down, that he had headed into a warzone without leaving a message behind for Desmond. He hadn't had long to think at Abstergo, but surely he could have asked the Templars for a pen and paper, given Desmond some small part of him to wake up to. He could have written anything: _I'm sorry_, because he was, _I love you_, because he did. It probably would have ended up lame and clichéd but it would have been _something_, and now it was too late and a single lucky bullet fired in this irrelevant little war would be enough to take Clay out of the equation permanently, with no chance for a reprieve. When Desmond woke up, the last thing that he remembered would be forgetting Clay.

Dying was clearly not an option, and so Clay did not try to take part in this fight; even if he had any interest in it, he had the excuse that he couldn't stop compressing the wound beneath his fingers. To his surprise, no other men in their party took bullets, and he could tell by the diminishing amount of gunfire from the other side that the rebels were either retreating or dying. By the range of bullets that were spraying in their direction, many of them spattering through the second floor windows of the building behind them, Clay guessed that they were none too well trained.

It turned out to be a good guess. After a good fifteen minutes, Fadel and his men found themselves shooting at nothing. Fadel held up a hand for cease-fire and they all listened very carefully, until finally one of the soldiers tested the water by taking the beret that had somehow miraculously remained on his head, placing it upon the butt of his gun, and lifting it over the cover of the overturned Jeep. The beret's streak of luck continued when no bullets came to end its life.

Eventually, Clay broke the silence by saying, of the soldier in his care, "This man is dead." He wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that he'd taken pressure off the wound when distracted by the silence, but didn't waste time agonising over it. He wasn't even supposed to be helping these people in the first place.

Khoury, the soldier with the beret, slowly lowered his rifle and righted his uniform before standing up. Fadel and Al Mahainy followed suit, with Clay waiting for a few seconds to give the rebels a chance to shoot his companions, before reluctantly rising to his feet. There was blood all over his hands, which he thought was somewhat unfair given that he was the only one of the party for whom this did _not_ make a good visual metaphor. He wiped the palms on his clothes and followed the three men out onto the road, staring at the fallen bodies on the other side.

It was obvious from the size of them, if not by their shredded faces, that they were teenagers. Probably not a full moustache between the whole lot of them. At least that explained why their aim was so terrible.

Now that the gunfire was over, the other inhabitants of the town were beginning to make themselves known - appearing in windows and doorways, staring in near-silence. A few of them were sobbing, which probably meant that the dead kids belonged to families around here, but all of them seemed too afraid to approach either the soldiers or the bodies. One woman was being physically held back by her husband, and was pointing and shrieking.

Clay looked over at where she was pointing. To Fadel he said, "One of them's still alive."

His backpack was halfway off his shoulders when Khoury strolled over to the boy, who was still flopping limply on the ground like a gutted fish, and put a bullet through his brain.

Fadel looked back at Clay. "Thanks," he said.

* * *

Khoury and Al Mahainy managed to get the Jeep upright, but it had four tyres that looked like Swiss cheese and only one spare. There was a dark puddle on the ground which showed where their remaining fuel had trickled out of their tank, and the front windshield was smoky with cracks. It was dark by the time they'd finished assessing the damage, and the air was starting to get cold. There were no street lamps here, and if they continued walking the only guide they'd have to Masyaf would be the feel of the road against their boots.

Fadel walked around the Jeep one lost time, then pointed to the front and back seats. "Al Mahainy, Khoury," he said. "Top bunk."

Turning to Clay, he smiled dryly and said, "Turner. Bottom bunk."

Clay hadn't been supplied with a sleeping bag, so he took off the light jacket he had and bundled it up into a makeshift pillow before sliding underneath the Jeep, trying to find a spot where he wouldn't have oil or gas dripping on him all night. A few seconds later Fadel shoved a couple of blankets down next to him and crawled under to join him.

"Al Mahainy is taking first watch," he said. "Don't try to run."

Clay didn't reply. He knew that if he decided to take off, there was no way that Al Mahainy would ever see, let alone catch him. He had decided to stick with the ex-soldiers for a while in order to gain information and supplies. He'd already managed to loot the body of the dead man before they'd buried him, and gained a hunting knife, some cigarettes, Syrian currency, food and extra water for his troubles.

"Tell me, John Turner," Fadel said at last. "How long have you been working for the United Nations?"

Clay paused before answering. "Not long."

"But you don't flinch at the sound of a bullet, nor baulk at the sight of dead bodies. You did not seem alarmed when Khoury killed that boy. In my experience, you relief workers tend to do a lot more squawking and fussing over such things."

"Do you kidnap a lot of relief workers?"

Fadel laughed softly. "None who were so good at changing the subject." He fell silent after that, for so long that Clay had begun to wonder whether he'd fallen asleep when he spoke again. "This incident today, you will not speak of it when we reach Masyaf."

"Of course not. We wouldn't want the rebels figuring out that you're not really defectors."

Somewhere nearby, an insect buzzed. Fadel didn't speak or even so much as turn his head, and that was enough to confirm what Clay had already pretty much figured out.

"You claim to be so dedicated to the revolution that you gave up your lives, families and careers for it, betrayed the army," Clay continued. "But today I saw you shoot a bunch of kids who were supposedly on your side, without remorse. You're going to Masyaf so that you can infiltrate the rebel base there, then either feed intel back to your commanders or just destroy the place from the inside out."

Fadel spoke at last. "Are you planning to tell them?"

"I don't particularly care what you do. Non-partisan, remember?"

He looked over at Fadel, but his face was invisible in the dark and his breathing was even. The man had most likely been trained not to give way under torture, and Clay guessed that this was the first time he'd ever been caught in a lie. In truth, he neither liked nor disliked Fadel: the man was irrelevant. As for the killings he'd witnessed, it had become an effort to actually get bothered over death after all the slaughter he had seen through the eyes of his ancestors. This was not a source of concern: Clay had known for a while now that he was not a good person, and he wasn't about to force some tears out over a bunch of people he didn't know getting killed from their own stupidity.

"You are ... unusual," Fadel said at last. "The entire world media is wringing their hands over these bloody terrorists and their so-called cause. You come all the way out here, risking your life, and you don't even care."

"I care," Clay said, softly. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't." He turned over and ended the conversation, but it took him a while to fall asleep.

They wound up staying in the town for several days after Khoury discovered a gas station and car shop at the end of it. He told the sullen owner, at gunpoint, to tow the Jeep into the garage and fix her up to the best of his abilities. The vehicle was far too valuable for the soldiers to simply abandon, and Clay guessed that they wanted the option of a quick getaway from Masyaf if their cover was blown. The shop owner had a wife and two small children, and he didn't even bother trying to argue as he gathered together the parts and began to work. Khoury, who knew the most about vehicle repair, watched him to make sure he didn't do anything untoward to the brakes or "accidentally" leave explosives in the gas tank.

On their last day in the town, Clay sat on the bonnet of a battered Mini outside and watched the sun set over the horizon that held Masyaf. He gently touched his burns and realised that they didn't really hurt any more, and the realisation triggered a small pitch of disappointment in his stomach. Looking down at his forearms, which had now begun slowly to turn from pale to golden brown, he looked at the old scars, the ones he'd acquired back at Abstergo when the only way to bring himself back to reality was to chew on his flesh until it bled, or gouge at it with a biro, or smash it against the edges of furniture.

The yard was full of rusty metal parts. He still had a knife in his backpack.

Unbidden, the memory of Desmond on his knees in the motel room came to Clay. The sting of antiseptic almost felt real.

_Crazy I can deal with. This is just stupid. Stupid I'm not going to tolerate._

Clay rolled down his sleeves and brushed a hand over his face as he slid off the bonnet. He walked into the darkness of the garage with the sun at his back.


	7. Chapter 7

Bottom bunk would be fast losing its appeal, if it had had any to begin with. Clay had found an old blanket for a small measure of comfort, but all the same he was growing tired of waking up and finding the bottom of the Jeep inches from his face. On the morning of their departure for Masyaf, he rolled out from under the vehicle, wincing at the pull in his back, and managed to bump his head on the open passenger door when he sat up. He was clutching his head and swearing in technicolor when the morning was topped off by the vicious kick of a boot into his side.

"Ow! What the fuck...?"

Fadel kicked him again, this time hard enough in the ribs to cut off the exclamation. He did not look pleased, and he jabbed a finger towards the mouth of the garage. Sitting up, Clay saw Khoury and Al Mahainy engaged in the _sujud_ stage of their morning prayer: prostrate on their prayer mats with their palms flat by their bowed south-facing heads, noses and foreheads pressed close to the woven material.

Clay clutched at his smarting ribs as he stood up and muttered, "You didn't have to kick me."

"Count yourself lucky. Had you woken up in that fashion earlier, you would have had both Al Mahainy and Khoury kicking you out of respect for my morning _salah_."

"You take turns?"

"Of course. Someone has to keep an eye out, to make sure no one puts a bullet in our heads while we are speaking to God."

They watched the two men for a while, Clay doing so with mild interest. Malik had, like many of the Assassins, been more or less atheist, but Clay had gained a reasonable knowledge of Islam through his experiences in the Jerusalem Bureau. Malik had been given the position a few short years after Saladin and his forces managed to retake the city from the Crusaders, finally allowing Jews and Muslims to return for the first time since their mass slaughter and expulsion in 1099. During Malik's time in office, and to this day, Jerusalem was a hodgepodge of churches, synagogues and mosques: you couldn't beat the city for religious fervour, but try getting everyone to agree on one religion.

Clay wasn't religious. Clay wasn't even atheist, since that would imply that he considered his beliefs important. As for as he was concerned, any God that might have once been around was not giving enough input to be considered significant, and he wasn't about to waste his time praying on the off-chance that it might earn him an eternity in a heaven that probably wasn't there.

"Did you three know each other before you enlisted?" he asked Fadel.

"We did not enlist. We were conscripted. Khoury and Al Mahainy are both from Damascus, but they did not know each other before they joined the army. I am from Al-Hasakah."

Clay looked sideways at him. "Are you a Kurd?"

Fadel's face was inscrutable. "Yes."

Now _that_ was interesting. "Don't you guys get treated like shit in this country?"

The sergeant didn't bother to dignify that with an answer, but Clay was figuring it out already.

"That's why you were picked for this mission. Three conscripts, a Kurdish leader - you're all prime defector material, you all have a motive to join the rebels."

"Yes."

"So why don't you? You're halfway there already."

Al Mahainy and Khoury were finished, and were rolling up their prayer mats. Fadel flipped his sunglasses down so that they covered his eyes and opened the door of the Jeep. "I would not expect an American to understand. Get in the truck."

* * *

When they finally arrived in Masyaf, Clay asked Fadel what the name of the place was that they were passing through. When he was told that they'd reached their destination, he couldn't quite believe what he was hearing, and immediately sat up straighter and tried to spot landmarks that he recognised.

The place had tripled in size, and it even had _roads_ now. It was as mountainous as ever: tiers of houses leading up a steep gradient to the hill where Masyaf Castle towered over everything else, but all the buildings that had been there in Malik's time had replaced with newer housing. The market that had once sold only vegetables and baskets and bread now had a kebab stall, and men were walking around waving boxes of cigarettes and shouting out ludicrously cheap prices for them. One thing remained, and that was the poverty: many of the children running around the streets were barefoot, and everywhere Clay looked there were refugees without shelter, holding their hands out and begging, not for money but for food and water. Aborted limbs were wrapped in dirty bandages and there was not a person around who looked well-fed or healthy. Amidst the crowd were members of the Syrian Free Army, wrapped round in approximations of uniform and more often than not wearing scarves or balaclavas to hide their identities.

Khoury, who was sitting next to Clay, had been looking over curiously and finally spoke to him directly for the first time. "You look like a man returning home. Have you been to Masyaf before?"

"Not for a very, very, very long time," Clay said slowly. "It's changed."

The soldier nodded and spat bitterly through the open window, narrowly missing an elderly refugee woman who was walking blindly in the road. "Bloody terrorists are tearing this country apart."

"Khoury!" Fadel snapped warningly from the front seat. As he turned his head, Clay noticed that over the recent days his moustache had been joined by a layer of stubble, which took away the clean-cut soldier edge that he'd had and left him looking more like the rebels that they were passing. Khoury froze at the reprimand, and glanced around as the Jeep rumbled on, but no one seemed to have overheard his outburst. Clay was also watching the chaos of Masyaf, and wondering how he was ever going to find a centuries-lost relic in this mess when it had probably already been blown into the sun or buried under a hundred yards of rock and dust by the war.

The way to Masyaf castle had been widened from the narrow, unkept path into a gravelled road now, and the castle itself was not a ruin, but rather had been restored with modern architecture fleshed around the remaining ancient stones. The entrance to the courtyard now had an electric gate instead of the old iron portcullis, and there was a hurriedly-constructed checkpoint in front of it, an armed soldier leaning against the door and watching their approach. Clay suddenly felt concern eating at him: if the Free Army soldiers saw through Fadel's story, there was a chance that he might be gunned down with the rest of them, or worse. He wouldn't be able to help Desmond from the inside of a cell or a grave.

Slowly, the soldier stalked over to the Jeep, not unslinging the assault rifle from his shoulder but shifting it slightly on his back to make its presence more visible. He jerked his chin and told them to get out of the vehicle. Clay waited until the others began to move before joining them.

The soldier turned to him first, eyeing his medic's patch and the letters on his jacket. "You are from the United Nations? You are a doctor?" he asked briskly.

Resisting the urge to make a glib comment, Clay simply nodded.

"Good. We have wounded inside and not enough men who know how to treat them. Let me see your badge."

Clay handed over the identity badge that had been given to him by the Templars. Knowing their reach, it probably wasn't even a forgery; he wouldn't be surprised if 'John Turner' was on the UN's databases now.

The soldier looked at the badge for a short time before nodding and handing it back. "That is in order. Nabil!" He waved a hand and a boy, not older than fourteen and carrying a gun that looked oversized against his small body, came jogging over eagerly. "Escort this man to the infirmary."

Nabil nodded once and then turned his attention to Clay, jutting his chin out a little. "You now, yes?" he barked in broken English.

Clay looked over his shoulder at Fadel, who was standing quietly by the Jeep, watching the exchange with Khoury and Al Mahainy hanging back slightly. He pulled a cigarette from the front pocket of his fatigues, and as he bent his head to light it he disguised a small nod within the motion.

"Yes?" Nabil repeated, the word sharper this time.

Clay ignored him and walked over to Fadel, who lifted his head and inhaled on the cigarette. It might not be worth much, but it would take only a few seconds to give the soldiers a small touch of credibility that might help them. Clay held out a hand and, after a short pause, Fadel shook it.

"Thank you," Clay said. "For everything. I will see you on the other side."

It occurred to him, as he saw the Free Army soldier relax his stance marginally, that he was helping operatives of a cruel, brutal regime to infiltrate the base of some of the few people brave enough to fight for their country's freedom, and that once they were inside Masyaf they would almost certainly bring suffering and defeat to its inhabitants. But he needed allies in the hunt for the Piece of Eden, and having someone on the inside who owed him a measure of friendship might be the very thing that tipped the balance in his favour.

Releasing Fadel's hand, Clay turned and followed Nabil to the electric gate, which creaked slowly open until they were able to pass. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Fadel and the gate guard already deep in conversation, but curiosity about the state of Masyaf forced his gaze forward again. The courtyard had the same basic structure as when Malik had lived here, but the training circle had been widened to encompass an entire area where boys and men were currently blindfolded and piecing guns together while a grizzled soldier timed them with a stopwatch. Clay realised why Fadel and his team had been assigned to Masyaf. This was not simply a temporary shelter for the Syrian Free Army - they were recruiting and training new soldiers from the refugees who had flocked here.

The infirmary was housed in a new part of the castle, situated where the gardens used to be. Clay stepped through the door and looked around a long, narrow room full of cots where men, women and children lay curled up or flat on on their backs, some groaning and some silent. The bed nearest to Clay contained a child whose face had been burned so badly that some of the muscles were partially exposed. Half of his nose was gone and he (though it was hard to tell the sex; it might well have been a she) was weeping softly, the tears seeping into the black and red flesh. Clay thought about the fading burns on his own body and wondered what it would feel like to die in a fire like that, like the American Assassins had.

He walked slowly down the path between the beds, towards where a long-haired woman in a white coat was shining a light into the eyes of someone in sand-coloured fatigues. From her skin tone he guessed that she was a European or American United Nations doctor, and he tensed a little as he realised how quickly she might see through his disguise.

"Your pupils are reacting fine, and I can't find any immediate indicators of potential brain damage," she was saying. "Though of course my usual recommendation would be an EEG."

"Not really an option," the soldier replied, smiling at the understatement.

Clay had opened his mouth already to greet the doctor, but something stopped him in his tracks. His guts realised before his brain did, maybe even before his ears did, and something went very tight inside him, making it hard to breathe. The soldier turned his head. The soldier was Desmond Miles.

It was impossible. Desmond was in a coma. Desmond was inside an Animus in Abstergo, ten thousand miles away.

Desmond was in Masyaf, half a step away.

Impossible. Crazy. Stupid.

It was Desmond.


	8. Chapter 8

The lower tier of Masyaf's garden still remained, weathered arches framing the endless, beautiful landscape of Syria and the river below that wound its way into the mountains. From here, it was almost easy to imagine being back in Malik's memories, in a country being torn apart by quite a different war. Clay leaned over the balustrade, looking at the plastic cup of water that the doctor had shoved into his hand. His fingers shook and the receptacle slipped from them, the water arcing in the air and the cup clattering off rocks occasionally as it fell down the mountain.

"That's littering, you know."

His brain still struggling to reboot from the shock, Clay remembered being told to wait out here, and Desmond saying that he would be right back. Until now, fantasies over their eventual reunion had always included an embrace, a kiss, whispered words of intimacy or at least something, but Clay had found himself unable to move, and Desmond had kept his distance. He was doing so now, hanging back with his hands in his pockets, looking with troubled pensiveness at Clay. His hair had grown out whilst he was in the coma but now it was shorter, slightly ragged as though Desmond had cut it himself, and the fatigues were loose on his frame where he had lost weight. Otherwise he seemed unharmed, and it was breathtaking to see him like this; Clay had forgotten how exquisite Desmond was when he was awake, alert, and sure of who he was.

Why was it so hard to speak? Why was it impossible to do anything except stare? Was it because he still wasn't entirely sure whether this was really Desmond, or simply a random Syrian soldier that Clay's precarious grip on reality had morphed into the one person he needed to see.

After a long pause, Desmond spoke again, softly. "You're surprised to see me." It wasn't a question. "No, _I_ was surprised. I couldn't believe it when I turned around and you were there, but you ... With you, it's different."

There was something very wrong here, and Clay couldn't put a name to it except to say that the bond that had always been between Desmond and himself, the magnetic pull by which they were connected, seemed to be absent here. A wedge existed that was holding Desmond back and keeping the two of them apart, leaving an awful cold weight in Clay's chest, just at the point where Desmond's presence always used to tug. He wanted to go over there and wrap his arms around Desmond, to bury his face against his bare skin and inhale his deep, unique scent so that he could be sure that this was real, but he couldn't move.

Desmond's eyes skimmed over the dark red patches on Clay's arm, up the the faintly scarred flesh on his neck and face, and his expression tightened fractionally. "I've been here for a few days," he said at last. "My father brought me here. Ever since I woke up, I've done pretty much nothing but fight your corner for you, Clay, so I need you to do something for me."

Miraculously, Clay's voice came unstuck. "Anything," he croaked, so low that he wondered if Desmond could even hear him.

"I need you to tell me the truth. I need you to tell me that you haven't been working for Abstergo." The mask slipped a little, and suddenly Desmond looked weary and wary and pleading.

It was easier to speak, now that he'd remembered he could. "That's two things, and I can only do one of them," Clay said. "Which would you prefer?"

Desmond sucked in a huge breath, and then placed both his palms over his eyes and stood there, pressing his hands to his face. As though they were playing a game of Grandmother's Footsteps, Clay found himself finally able to move now that Desmond was not pinning him in place with his gaze, and took several shaky steps forward. A mere two feet was left between them when Desmond took his hands away, freezing Clay where he stood once more.

"Why?" Desmond demanded. "Tell me why, you have to tell me _why_."

Clay's head was spinning and he could figure out how to answer that, couldn't find the most efficient way to explain that he'd been trying to save Desmond when he hadn't even needed saving. He decided to skip the explanation and go right to the justification. "What's the big deal?" he asked. "You know I have no loyalty to the Assassins any more. You know that I..."

"I _thought_ I knew you, now I don't, I don't..." Desmond was unravelling, breathing hard, his eyes bright and furious, fists clenching at his sides. "A whole fucking week I've been listening to people call you a traitor, and now you show up and you tell me it's true, and you have the _nerve_ to look me in the eye and say 'what's the big deal_'_?"

"Desmond..." Clay took a step forward, reached out, and everything was spinning even before the fist impacted on his cheekbone in an explosion of something more than pain, knocking him back so that he overbalanced and landed on his back in the grass.

"Get away from me, you fucking _psychopath_!" Desmond screamed, perhaps before the punch or perhaps after it. The words swallowed the moment up and hit Clay as a wave of numbness that seemed to wrap itself around his spine. His head lolled to the side, and he saw the sun behind Desmond, transforming him into a silhouette, black and empty and unreachable, and then Desmond turned and walked away and the light slammed into Clay's retinas and seemed to burn directly into his brain. He cringed and covered his eyes, recognising with a sudden rush of dread the sensations that were starting to envelop him: this was something that he had not felt for many months now, and never this severely since he had met Desmond. The world had gone wrong and ceased to make sense, and madness was falling like a blanket to cover him.

A shadow fell over his face.

"Pick him up."

The angles of the world shifted. Suddenly he was upright, dangling from the arms of two Assassins. Clay squinted at the dark shape in front of him until it reformed.

"Why did you come here?" William Miles asked shortly. "We know the Templars sent you. What did you hope to accomplish?"

Clay tried to remember what Vidic had wanted him to do, but all he could recall were his own motivations. "Desmond," he said, and it came out with a lift at the end, like a question.

Bill's upper lip curled in disgust. "They wanted you to finish what you started."

The side of Clay's face where Desmond had hit him felt stiff, and it hurt to speak. "I don't understand what's going on," Clay managed. "How is he...?"

"He still won't tell me the exact details, only that he woke up when the fire started and managed to escape." Miles took a step closer and grabbed Clay's chin, lifting it, forcing their gazes to meet. "You failed, do you understand _that_? Your little blaze took out a lot of good men and women, but you didn't manage to kill my son then, and you won't achieve it now."

And slowly, the pieces of information began to cohere inside Clay's head. "No..."

Bill released his chin so suddenly that Clay's head dropped, jerking the muscles in his neck. "Take him to one of the cells. We'll deal with him later."

"I didn't start that fire, Bill, listen to me, I didn't..."

"I don't have time to listen to you." Bill crouched down, back into Clay's eyeline, and put his face very close, speaking in a low, dangerous voice. "You just told my son straight to his face that you've been working for Abstergo all this time. I can't imagine what he's going through right now, but I need to go and be with him infinitely more than I need to be here, listening to you lie to me." He straightened up and walked away without another word.

The Assassins either side of him jerked at his arms, but Clay couldn't move at first. His mind was whirring frantically, replaying the conversation he'd just had and trying to imagine it from Desmond's perspective, trying to focus on what _hadn't_ been said. It all clicked together and before he was even aware of doing it he began screaming Desmond's name at the top of his lungs, determined to be heard and given a second chance to explain. One of the Assassins hit the ground and Clay realised that he'd freed an arm and hit the man. Then something impacted on the back of his skull and cut his strings.

The cells were the same ones that the Assassins had used in Altaïr's time, and were located beneath the gateside tower. As Clay was half-dragged across the training grounds, blood trickling down the back of his skull and onto his neck, he passed Fadel, Khoury, and Al Mahainy. The latter two stared open-mouthed, whilst Fadel merely watched the spectacle with a furrowed brow, meeting Clay's eyes questioningly. Clay was too exhausted to even shake his head, and within seconds the Syrian soldiers were behind him: the true unknown danger walking into the Assassins' midst.

* * *

Chunks of time began to disappear.

That was always the first sign.

Clay lay on a dirt-covered floor, ignoring the cloth pallet that had been provided for him. His voice was too hoarse to speak above a whisper, and Desmond never returned despite all his yelling.

He waited for Bill Miles to come and question him, but that never happened either. He was sure that, given enough time, he'd be able to make the man see reason, to explain more clearly about his involvement with Abstergo, perhaps even to warn him about Fadel and the others. But Bill never came. Guards stopped by with food that Clay couldn't eat, but they refused to listen to his pleas. An indeterminate amount of time passed and then Clay simply gave up.

Desmond had never been at Abstergo. Clay would probably never know what had really happened on the night of the fire: how Shaun had died, how close Abstergo had come to capturing Desmond, why he had been taken here after escaping. All he knew was that the Templars had failed in their objective, and then he'd walked right up to them and handed himself over for _nothing_ - taken in by CCTV footage that (it was obvious now) must have been archived from Desmond's stay at the facility two years ago.

These feelings were too much to bear, and so Clay chose to feel nothing. Madness purred at the back of his mind seductively and he let it take over, slipping right back into place as though it had never left. Malik, Mateusz, Ezio, the others whose lives he had lived: he invited them all back into his head and let them take the wheel while he simply slumped on the floor, propped up against the wall, and stared into space. It wasn't peaceful, but it was better than sanity.

Clay didn't know how much time had passed when he rose above the surface momentarily and found himself scratching symbols into the wall. His thumbnail had cracked against a sudden ridge in the wall, splitting bloodily down the middle, and it was the fresh stab of pain which had caught his attention. He pushed gently at the brick he'd been writing on and it wobbled.

The spark in his chest actually hurt, more so when he realised it was hope. He hadn't really considered escape to be a possibility, but surely if one brick was loose then others might be as well. This was an old, old cell and the water trickling through the stones must have done some damage over the years. He worked and pulled at the brick with his fingers and, after a little resistance, it began to slide out. It was almost as if someone had been here before and done most of the work for him.

Clay finally got the brick loose and dropped it. It crashed to the floor, half an inch from his foot, but he ignored it as he stared into the darkness of the hole he'd made. There was soil at the far end of it, but it was not empty. There was something hidden, gleaming in the dark.

He reached in with his bloody fingers, carefully, and touched the small object. It grated against the surface as Clay dragged it out, and when it was free he turned it over in his fingers and held it up to the light.

An alien noise came from his throat and it took him a moment to realise that it was laughter, another to realise why he was laughing.

Well. This was a cell, after all, and he could hardly be its first inhabitant.

"Turner. John Turner."

The words came low at first, then loud enough to be heard over Clay's uneven spasms of laughter, Quickly tucking the object away into his clothes, he turned and saw a figure leaning against the bars. For a mad moment he saw Desmond's face, full of concern, but then the features shifted to reflect reality and he recognised Fadel's rather severe features, drawn up in hesitation.

A wave of dizziness overcame Clay, and he staggered and then dropped to his knees by the bars of his cell. He closed his eyes and shifted into a sitting position with his shoulder braced against the cool metal, hearing the rustle of clothing as Fadel knelt down.

"There is food here. You should eat."

The memories were flooding back now, and they hurt. Clay wished that the madness would take him again but it was being coy, straying out of his reach.

"I asked why you are being kept here, but no one would tell me." A flash of anger entered Fadel's voice. "The United Nations should know how these so-called revolutionaries are treating their people."

Clay opened his eyes again and looked through the bars at Fadel. "You grew a beard," he said.

Fadel paused for a moment. "Yes," he replied.

"It looks awesome." The laughter was back, high and unhappy. Fadel waited patiently for it to subside before speaking again.

"I wished to talk with you. It was a risk, coming down here, but you tried to help my men and I want to help you, if I can. I think you should at least be forewarned." The tone of Fadel's voice was almost enough to tell the story by itself. "My men and I have obtained the information that we came here to acquire."

"You're leaving?"

"Yes..." Fadel lowered his eyes to the dirt floor, and then lifted them again. "This is a terrorist camp. It cannot be allowed to remain, and if we wipe out the soldiers here then it will strike a devastating blow at the heart of their army. We are going to call an air strike when we leave, to destroy Masyaf."

"Just the castle?"

"The castle will be the target, but there may be ... collateral damage."

Clay considered this, and found it drawing something out of him, an old instinct rising to the surface of his brain even as the madness continued to drain away like poison from a wound. The castle was going to be bombed, which meant that he was going to die. That was an unsettling thought, but it wasn't the main source of the anxiety. There were innocent civilians in the village who would die, but Clay did not know or care for them. The castle itself would be obliterated, and everyone inside would be killed. _Everyone_. Including...

The air left Clay's lungs.

Fadel pulled a pad of paper and a ballpoint pen from his pocket. "I cannot free you," he said gravely. "But ... If you have any message that needs delivering, to your family or friends, then I will see to it that it reaches them. I owe you that." He pushed the items through the bars.

Clay's mind was going a hundred miles an hour now, but whereas before it had merely been spinning in circles, now he had a goal upon which to focus and it allowed him to think intelligently. He picked up the pen and paper and began to write and speak at the same time.

"I have to ask you for something else."

Fadel looked up, a little sharply. "I will try to grant your request, if it is within my power."

"It's not just within your power, it will help you escape. When you leave, I want you to take a hostage."

* * *

_Desmond,_

_Fuck the cliché. If you're reading this then it means you're alive. That's all that matters. I didn't set that fire and I've only been working for Abstergo for a few days, since Vidic lied to me and told me they were holding you prisoner. This whole thing is a comedy of fucking errors and I'm not laughing._

_I know this is kind of a shitty goodbye note but I don't have time for a second draft. Get out of this country, find somewhere safe and lead a good life. Know that I love you, that I never stopped loving you and never will._

_Crazy and stupid, right?_

_Clay_

* * *

Once Clay had finished outlining his request, and Fadel had made his promises and sworn on Allah's name to keep them, there came a clatter of boots overheard. Fadel grabbed the pad of paper and left in a hurry. Perhaps he realised afterwards that he'd left his pen behind, but he never came back for it.


	9. Chapter 9

**Introductory note**: _Long chapter is long. And also potentially the last one for a few days. Many thanks for your reviews and encouragement throughout all the Clay/Des fics; what started as an exercise to sharpen my writing skills written for an incredibly niche fandom has somehow turned into four stories and hundreds of thousands of words, so it's lovely to hear that people enjoy reading it. If you want to see the trigger warning for this chapter, please scroll to the bottom._

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It was sunset when he first heard the sound of raised voices.

Clay lifted his head and closed his eyes so that he could focus on what he was hearing. It was just a conversation at the moment, but the tone of one of the voices sounded suspicious and accusing. They were somewhere overhead, near the gate and moving down the path. The set of bars in Clay's cell looked out onto the road leading away from the castle, and as the rumble of an engine vibrated through the evening air, he pushed himself slowly to his feet, using the wall for support, and made his way over to the small opening.

The Jeep was stationary on the road with someone - by the beret Clay guessed that it was Khoury - sitting at the wheel. Al Mahainy was leaning against one of the doors with his fingers very close to the gun on his hip. The field of view was cut off by the makeshift gatehouse, but after a few seconds Fadel emerged from behind its frame, walking backwards and speaking slowly in English. His arm came into view and Clay saw that he was holding a handgun, concealed from the people he was speaking with by the person directly in front of him. Fadel continued backwards, the person in front followed him, and Clay saw that it was Desmond. His face was tight with anger, but the motion of their passage meant that the muzzle of the gun occasionally bumped against his spine, and he wasn't trying to fight. Desmond was leaving Masyaf, whether he wanted to or not.

Al Mahainy opened the back door of the Jeep and climbed in, still facing the castle. The voices at the gate grew louder and there was a metallic clicking of weaponry, but Fadel suddenly gripped the back of Desmond's shirt, jerked him back, and raised the gun so that it was visibly pressed against the side of his head.

"Drop your weapons! Drop them or he dies!"

"Do as he says," came an immediate response, and Clay, with an old flare of anger, recognised the voice of William Miles.

"Get back, get back inside the grounds and close the gate," Fadel commanded, coolly but loud enough to be heard from far away. "Do not follow us. If I believe we are being followed, I will shoot him in the head."

Clay was not troubled by these words; this was part of the plan, and Fadel had sworn to protect Desmond's life as well as his own men. They would drive to Hama, and then Desmond would be released once the air strike was over. Clay wished that he could have done more to guarantee Desmond's safe passage back to America, but that was something that the man would have to figure out for himself.

The standoff ended. Fadel pulled his hostage into the Jeep and within minutes the only trace of the soldiers and Desmond was the dust that had been raised on the road. Clay waited for the roar of engines, for the Assassins and rebels to follow, but it seemed that Bill was not willing to risk his son's life needlessly. Clay guessed that part of the dialogue exchange had included Fadel's promise to release Desmond.

Not that any of this mattered. Desmond was away from Masyaf, and the Syrian Air Force would be here in less than half an hour to wipe the castle off the map. After today, the only way that anyone would ever be able to see the gardens or the library or the training ground again would be through the lens of the Animus. Clay estimated that there were about three hundred people living in there, including the civilians in the infirmary. He thought about the fire at the Atlanta Den, about the child with its face burnt away, and in his head he saw the bombs falling and Masyaf burning, the ceiling crashing down upon him or the flames rushing in through the bars of his cell to claim him.

Desmond was safe. He would not die in this fire. And Clay would never see him again.

He slid down the wall as the sun set on the horizon. and stared at nothing in particular. He focused on the well of pain, fear, weariness and sorrow inside himself and dipped his mind into it until it was coated all over with black oil, knowing the place that he needed to go and only hoping that he could get there fast enough.

* * *

Clay opened his eyes and it was still dark. Night. It wasn't light that had woken him but noise. Scratching. A voice. Saying ... 'Back'? Was that ... 'back'?

BLAM

A large hole appeared in the door as the lock, barrel and all, shot across the room and clattered off the wall. Half a second later the door swung open and someone burst through, causing Clay to wince and recoil. Bombs were going to be falling on him at any minute and now someone had decided to put the boot in one last time?

"... Kaczmarek ... Hey, asshole..."

"Fuck off," Clay slurred, wrapping his arms tighter around himself.

"Well, someone woke up on the wrong side of the floor." The figure crouched down into a pool of moonlight and Clay looked up.

His stomach dropped so rapidly that he thought for a second that he was going to throw up.

No.

This wasn't happening.

He'd given up _everything_. This couldn't be happening.

"Desmond," he moaned. "Desmond, get out."

"That's the plan." The young Assassin looked like he couldn't decide between smiling and scowling. He was out of breath, sweat leaving tracks through the dirt on his face, and he was holding his shoulder a little stiffly, as though it hurt to move it, but he no longer looked hateful or disgusted. He was looking at Clay the way that he used to, the way he'd looked at him on that night in New York. "What, you thought you were going to get away with just telling me everything in a fucking _note_? 'Lead a good life'? You do_ not_ get to dump me like that, Clay."

He needed to stop Desmond from talking. Desmond needed to leave. "Desmond ... You have to run, there's going to be an air strike, they're going to bomb the castle."

"I know. That army guy told me right before I threw myself out of the truck and came running back here." Desmond hesitated for a second, then laid a warm hand on Clay's cool arm, swallowing audibly, as though what he was about to say was unwilling to come out. Eventually he seemed to decide that it could wait. "Come on."

He trailed his hand down and made to grab Clay's hand, frowning when he found the object that Clay had been too weak to drop. Slowly extracting it from the pale fingers, Desmond held it up in front of his eyes, then brought it into the shaft of moonlight so that suddenly the pen was illuminated, the blood that was drenched and crusted over it suddenly brilliantly red, the only colour in the dark coffin of a room, and Clay focused on it as the rest of his vision began to dull.

"What is this? What...?" It was at this point that Desmond must have realised that his knees were sticky and wet where he was kneeling, and he looked down at the floor, following the puddle there back to its source, stubbornly uncomprehending until he was looking back at Clay, at his body, at his arms. Horror filled Desmond's gaze.

"I'm sorry," Clay whispered loosely, not even sure if he was making sense. "I was afraid. I really fucking hate fire, Des."

"_No_!" Desmond fumbled the first two buttons of his shirt open and then dragged the whole thing over his head. The material was rough as Desmond wound it around Clay's messily split wrists, binding them and pressing down hard on the softly pulsing wounds, triggering a fresh wave of agony. "No no no, oh _Christ_, Clay, just hold on. I'm going to get you out, I'm going to get us both out..."

It wasn't going to happen. Clay knew with a calm certainty that the cloth on his arms wasn't doing anything, and he only had minutes left. If he'd had the energy then he would probably be cursing his own impatience and cowardice, but everything was growing dim and muffled, and there was a more important task that he needed to focus on. "Get out of here," he hissed through the pain.

"Fuck that, _no_. Tell me what to do, please, Clay, I don't know what to do."

"_Leave_."

"I meant tell me what to do for your arms! Oh Jesus, Jesus, there's so much blood, _help_!" Desmond screamed the last word at the top of his voice, looking towards the door helplessly but pinned in place by the need to keep pressure on the bleeding. "Somebody fucking help us!"

He was panicking, his eyes wide and deer-like, his face streaked with dirt and tears and his head spinning round with his gaze always coming back to Clay, who felt a stab of guilt at the realisation that he'd even manage to fuck_ this_ up, just saying goodbye and letting go. There was no time, and Desmond needed to accept this so that he could leave and survive, be beautiful and good and strong and all the other things that Clay wasn't capable of.

"There's nothing you can do here. _Desmond_." Clay gathered every last bit of energy he had into making the name forceful enough to turn the man's head. "I'm done. There's nothing you can do." Even if Desmond managed to get him to the infirmary, there could only be minutes left before the bombs hit. If Desmond tried to get both of them away from the castle, Clay would bleed out before they even reached the village. At this point, his death was a certainty that no course of action would prevent, and Desmond's only chance was to leave Clay and run as fast as he could.

The truth finally hit Desmond and it was awful to watch. He sniffed and gasped and wiped a hand over his face and looked about ten years older than he actually was. He gathered the rags tighter around Clay's wrists as though they weren't soaked through already before shifting, not towards the door, but past Clay and behind him. He sat leaning against the wall, and suddenly Clay felt arms wrapping around him and gently lifting and pulling him back until he was surrounded by warmth, Desmond's legs sprawled either side of him and hands running down his biceps and forearms before finally tangling their fingers together. He felt a mouth press against the back of his head, and then a forehead resting in the same spot.

"Yeah," Desmond said at last, his voice thick but strong. "OK."

Clay almost drifted off in the sudden, unexpected comfort of the position, but urgency drew him back to consciousness. "Desmond," he said.

"I'm here."

Clay made a noise of desperation, darkness swimming in front of his eyes. "That's ... the problem."

"Clay, you _know _me. This is how it's got to be. Besides, even if I ran now, I'd probably still get caught in the air strike. There's no way I'm just going to leave you here, and if ... if I'm going out then I want it to be here, with you." Clay was so cold now that he could feel the faint warmth of Desmond's face as it was buried in his hair resolutely, could feel the heavy pounding of a heart against his back and a slight shaking in the limbs that surrounded him. That wasn't just grief - that was fear. Desmond was terrified of dying, and he was staying here anyway.

Time passed, vaguely, slipping away. Had be been alone, Clay would probably have allowed himself to pass out already, but Desmond was giving up his life to stay here and the wrongness of that was impossible to ignore. There had to be something that Clay could do, and the maddening thing was that there _was_ something, right at his fingertips. He struggled to bring it to the front of his mind, but it eluded him, and his blood was trickling away through the sodden, makeshift bandages and onto his legs, taking his memory with it.

The engines of a plane roared overhead.

There was a sharp, shuddering breath drawn in near his ear and Clay felt something hot splash onto his shoulder. "Oh shit," Desmond gasped as his shaking intensified and he pressed his face closer. "Oh. I love you, Clay, I love you so much. Oh, fuck."

That _hurt_. It hurt so much that it woke Clay up a little, and the thing that had been eluding him suddenly wandered casually back into his conscious mind. "Des..."

The grip around him grew a little stronger. "It's OK, I've got you."

"Desmond ... Look in my pocket..."

A machine-gun spray of laughter ruffled his hair. "Hardly an appropriate time."

"On the right side..."

One of his hands was released and he felt Desmond's fingers drag up his thigh, then fumble their way into his pocket. The fingertips kept searching until they landed on the object hidden there and slowly drew it out. Desmond held it up into the small shaft of moonlight.

"What is it? It looks like a ... a feather or something, but the metal..."

Clay gingerly turned his right arm over and lifted it free from the soaked mess of Desmond's shirt so that the ragged cut was exposed, looking like a lightning-split in the trunk of a tree. With the last reserves of his strength he murmured, "Push it in."

"In where?" Desmond had been temporarily distracted by the feather, but looked down and stiffened when he saw Clay's arm.

"In my arm. Put it inside. Trust me."

Desmond hesitated for a second, but the _trust me _worked. He lowered the feather and, feeling his way with his fingers, slid it into Clay's open wound.

_Electricity_.

"Get your fingers out, quick!"

"What the _hell_?"

Desmond had barely managed to remove his fingertips before the skin on Clay's arms snapped together and he felt a burst of warmth inside him that he realised was blood, enough blood to replace all he had lost. He let out a sharp cry of pleasure at the astounding instance of life returning and darkness clearing, and half-sprang to his feet, grabbing Desmond's dazed hand and pulling him up as well. Desmond stumbled a little so that Clay had to hold onto his shoulders to keep him steady, and the warmth and solidity of Desmond's bare torso beneath his hands added an intense and extremely ill-timed burst of sexual excitement to the moment, a sudden impulse to just throw Desmond back down on the floor and fucking _have_ him. Was there enough time?

Another plane engine buzzed through the night air, getting closer.

Probably not.

"Clay," Desmond looked a bit unsteady, but urgency was pushing him forward. "I don't know what the fuck just happened but if you can move then we need to get out of here _now_."

"Right, right." Desmond's lower lip was full and soft, and tasted of salt, and was that the pulse of his heart that was going through it? Whatever it was, it was delicious, and why did they need to get out of here anyway? He couldn't quite remember, but it can't have been that important.

A sharp nip on the mouth brought Clay temporarily back to his senses and he blinked, pulled back, and then grabbed Desmond's wrist and began dragging him down the narrow corridor towards the stairs. Overhead, he could hear yelling and the sounds of people running away, and realised that Desmond must have raised the alarm before he came running down here. Up, up, up the stairs, through the trapdoor, he could see the exit now and it was open, they were going to get away, but he wished that whistling noise would st-

The first spray of bombs hit the training ground. Clay caught a brief glimpse of bodies dividing up into their component parts and scattering before a burst of flame and rubble punched its way through the door and sent both of them tumbling backwards, shielding their faces from the sudden flare of heat. Seeing the fire triggered a sudden wave of terror in Clay that cut through his euphoria, and he scurried backwards as he saw a carpet of orange and yellow spilling towards them as the fibres on the floor ignited.

"Up," he said, grabbing Desmond by the elbow and pulling him towards the spiral staircase before he'd even managed to find his feet again.

"What's up?" Desmond yelled over the sounds of more nearby explosions, staggering onto the first step.

"No idea, but right now up is looking a lot better than down."

Clay didn't know what it was that was causing the floor below to flare up so quickly: some kind of spilt oil that was highly flammable, or just the old, dry wood of the floorboards. The fire rose up beneath them as they sprinted towards the top of the tower, and shortly afterwards a nearby explosion blew a car-sized hole in the tower wall, barely missing them and destroying a large section of the stairs that they had just come up. Desmond paused for a moment and glanced at Clay, panicked. There was no going back now.

"I guess we're going up."

They reached the top floor of the tower and then ascended a ladder, through a trap door to emerge on the roof. Desmond made it out first, gulping great lungfuls of clean air, and Clay saw him stop where he stood and stare out at something, before taking slow steps towards the crenellations of the building's edge. Clay hauled himself out after, and joined Desmond, frozen in place by what he saw.

Masyaf was simply gone. The old familiar face of the building was nothing but rubble: stone and glass scattered across what was left of the training ground. Some walls still rose above the wreckage, but they were cut down to no higher than ten feet, and an ugly black soot lay over everything: over the misshapen lump that had once been the gardens, and the balustrade outside the door, filling in the gaps between the fires that had broken out everywhere. Dimly, they could hear screaming below, but there was no visible movement. The Assassins and soldiers who hadn't managed to escape were smeared between the bricks and roasting in the flames.

And the air strike still wasn't over.

A fresh curtain of explosives below jerked the two men back into action. Clay ran over to the other side of the roof and looked out before pointing downwards.

"We have to jump."

Desmond ran over to him and looked down at the river that ran through the mountains. It looked rough and enraged, as though personally offended by the attack on Masyaf. "No fucking way. There's every chance we'll bounce off a rock on the way down, and we don't even know how deep the river is."

Clay raised his hand and sharply flicked Desmond on the forehead with his index finger, causing him to swear and rub at the affected spot. "That's why they call it a leap of faith, genius."

Their eyes met and there was a moment of stillness, where the chaos seemed to be temporarily muffled. The two of them stood profiled against the night sky, inches from the gulf of air that divided them from the waters below. There was so much that Clay needed to explain and to ask, to say and to hear, but they had time for none of it right now. He could feel his entire body singing from the influence of the Piece of Eden inside him, and vaguely he wondered if he would live long enough to know its true effects, but the ancient artefact just did not seem very interesting to him when Desmond was this close, his face filthy with soot, drawn with fear and confusion, and absolutely perfect.

Clay stepped up onto one of the crenellations and, without so much as a wobble, reached down with his hand to help Desmond up after him. The two of them stood precariously balanced there, looking out over the raging water far below.

"Fuck," Desmond said at last. "This might be the dumbest thing we've done yet."

"I'm glad that one of us is keeping track."

That triggered a shaky burst of laughter from Desmond, and he looked back up into Clay's face, his eyes damp. "If we don't make it..."

"We will."

"Would you hear me out? I just want to say..."

"Tell me later." And with no regard for the instability of their position, Clay reached out and cupped a hand around the back of Desmond's head, his thumb resting in the groove where his ear met his jaw, then leaned forward and kissed him sweetly.

They never actually jumped. An overhead pilot must have spotted them and decided to use them for target practice, because Clay suddenly found himself ripped away from Desmond in a blaze of white, and the next thing he knew they were falling down, down, towards the river, turned upwards so that he could see the tower crumbling from the force of the explosion and falling down after them. In the void he found a piece of Desmond and pulled him close, cocooning his body to protect it from the impact.

They hit the water and were rushed away downstream as Masyaf burned to ashes.

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**This chapter contains triggers related to self-harm and suicide.**


	10. Chapter 10

It was a lucky fall. The explosion launched them both away from the side of the cliff so that they tumbled straight down an aerial path uninterrupted by rocks. Clay was even able to grab hold of Desmond before impact, and they fell together for the last twenty feet or so.

Their luck ran out when they hit the water.

Clay's skin was still searing from the heat of the bomb when the freezing solidity of the river slammed into him, jerking his body violently before dragging him under. Suddenly Desmond's bare torso was slippery and impossible to grip, but Clay focused every ounce of his energy into thrusting his hands underneath the other man's armpits and locking his fists together. He attempted to broaden his back, to act as a shield for Desmond, and struggled to maintain a position where his own frame faced the onrush of dangers as they were swept away downstream.

It was futile. There was no control here, none. Even on the rare occasions when Clay found his head above water, he was too cold to draw breath: his very lungs seemed to have tensed in shock. He was only vaguely aware, through the darkness, that they were moving in one direction, for the river felt like the inside of washing machine and the journey downstream like simply tumbling over and over again in the water. The stretch of river where they had landed was deep, but that didn't last long.

They must have been travelling at a pace somewhere between ten and fifteen miles per hour when Clay hit the first rock. It may not sound all that fast, and if they had been moving in a car then the worst they might have felt would have been a large jolt. Even ten miles an hour is fast enough, however, when there is nothing protecting bare skin but a thin layer of clothing, and the rock against which Clay impacted was jaggd and vicious. He felt the earth-shaking crash of it, then the sensation of the river rolling him over the rock impatiently, and all he could think of was to wrap himself tighter around Desmond, to protect Desmond, to save Desmond.

They hit another rock. And another.

Clay bore the brunt of the first few, but he was unfortunate enough to have his eyes open when he saw Desmond's head slam brutally against a boulder that rose up out of the water like a shark's fin. Clay screamed and water rushed down his throat and into his stomach and lungs. He couldn't tell if Desmond was even still alive, but he maintained his grasp all the same, and after that he simply closed his eyes, breathed when he could, tried and failed to roll with the many punches that nature threw at him, and prayed for it to end soon.

He lost consciousness temporarily, and when he woke he found that the pace of the river had finally slowed to a gentle drift. Clay also realised that his arms were empty, that Desmond was gone, and it was this that jolted him back to reality with a terrifying stab of panic. He lifted his head above the water, amazed that he had the strength to do so until he realised that he was being assisted and there was some kind of platform at the back of his skull, preventing his nose and mouth from slipping back under the water. The material of his shirt was tugged up underneath his arms and he was no longer simply floating along with the river, but being pulled towards the bank. His heels scraped on mud and stone. The moon shone down and coloured the water a ghostly hue, like the River Styx, but Clay was free now, opening and closing his mouth in an attempt to draw breath and clutching at the slippery earth beneath him.

Then he was on his side and puking what felt like gallons of river water and stomach acid that burned his nose and throat upon reemergence. He coughed and then sucked in a huge breath, and wondered how he had ever conceived of taking oxygen for granted before now. Dizziness from suffocation rapidly turned into dizziness from hyperventilation, but Clay did not care one inch so long as he continued to be blessed with these great, generous gulps of air.

"Easy, easy."

_Desmond._ It was Desmond rubbing his back, holding him on his side until all the water came up, then dragging him further up the bank. The cliffs had given way to green fields coloured grey by the night, and the grass felt warm as though it hadn't yet forgotten the sun's rays. Clay was on his back now and Desmond was leaning over him, drenched from head to toe and shivering violently, with drops of water clinging to his skin and eyelashes and a hundred tiny waterfalls cascading off him.

"Hey," Desmond was saying, his voice stiff from the chattering of his teeth. "I need you to hold still for me, alright? I need to see where you're hurt."

Clay couldn't muster the muscle response required to nod, so he simply lay there as Desmond gently unbuttoned his shirt and slid it off his shoulders, lifting him to free the material that was trapped between him and the ground.

"Here, sit up."

Clay did so and forced himself to keep his eyes open, staring into Desmond's face as he was looked over and analysed. After a second or two, Desmond moved around him, ran his fingers down Clay's back, felt around his skull. There came a soft, almost inaudible hitch of breath.

"What?" Clay could not trust his own senses now - was too cold to feel anything. Desmond didn't say anything in response, which triggered a wave of anxiety. "For God's sake, Desmond, how bad is it?"

Slowly, Desmond came back around, knelt down in front of Clay and continued to stare at his bare skin in disbelief. "It's not. There's nothing. Not a scratch on you."

Clay paused for a beat. "That's fucking impossible. I must have slammed into about a hundred rocks in that river."

"So did I, but you know what? There's not a scratch on me, either. Not even a bruise, look." Desmond picked up Clay's hand and pressed it to his chest, and a minute or so of exploration revealed no gaping wounds or bleeding cuts; the place where Desmond's head should have been nearly torn off his shoulders by the impact of the shark-fin boulder was clean and intact.

Desmond's hand shook as he ran it through the sopping mess of his hair. Finally he asked, "Can you stand? If I help you, can you walk?"

Too weary to answer, Clay tested his muscles gently and found that they still worked. Nodding, he allowed Desmond to pick his arm up and wrap it around his own shoulders, gently lifting Clay to his feet. Desmond was worryingly cold to the touch, but his breath was warm on Clay's cheek as he spoke.

"There's shelter, I can see a building, about fifty feet from here. We need to get under cover or we're both going to freeze to death. Just squeeze my shoulder if you need to rest, yeah?"

Clay did need to rest, twice, before they reached the building that Desmond had promised. During the breaks he knelt on the grass, shaking so hard that his very bones ached and moulding his will to the feel of Desmond's hands on him. He lost consciousness again at one point and when he reopened his eyes they were staggering through the back door of the small, tin-roofed shack, with Desmond calling out into the empty air in vain. Whoever might have built this place and lived here, they were long gone now.

Clay closed his eyes. When he opened them he was curled up on the floor, stark naked and colder than he'd ever been in his entire life. He didn't know how long he lay there before he felt the slide of bare goosefleshed skin against his own and then the heaven of dry material - sacking of some sort. He reached out blindly in the dark, pulled Desmond close, and though it took many minutes they eventually began to warm one another. Stretching into the sun of Desmond, Clay slept.

* * *

Beams of light were streaming in through the holes in the wall, and in the time he had been asleep the shack had become unbearably hot and stuffy. Clay pushed himself upright and surveyed his surroundings. The building was approximately the size of a camper van and seemed to have only two rooms and no interior doors. The furniture was gone, and they'd slept on a few layers of cardboard and some newspapers that had been arranged into the form of a bed. There were remnants of a tiled roof left over, but most of it had been replaced with corrugated metal, and the plaster on the walls was cracked and crumbling away in places. Clay recognised the tattered clothes nearby as his own, or what was left of them after the journey downriver, and he pulled them on. Surprisingly, they were completely dry.

Desmond was sitting outside on the grass, warming himself in the sun and looking out over the river. Now that the cold was gone, Clay was able to take stock of just how fantastic he felt: no aches or pains, no cuts or burns from the explosion. Even his sunburn on his arms had faded to a medium-gold colour, and there was no evidence of the fifteen minutes he'd spent stabbing away at his wrists with the blunt end of the pen, save for the memory of it. Desmond, of course, had left his only shirt as a bloody pile on the floor of Clay's cell. His brown skin gleamed healthily under the morning sun, the small white scar from his kidney operation curled against his lower back but no fresh wounds to be seen. His messily-trimmed short hair stuck out where he had slept on it, and when he looked up Clay saw that he was chewing on a twig.

"You know, if you're that hungry we can just order some takeout."

Desmond spat the twig out. "My mouth tastes like ass and I don't have a toothbrush."

Clay grinned a little. "Hi."

"Morning."

He took that as an invitation to join Desmond on the grass but gave the other man space, ensuring that they didn't touch. The connection between them that had been broken ever since their reunion was there in a kind of ghostly form, creeping back but threatening to vanish again at any moment. Desmond was sitting with one leg stretched out, the other bent with the bare sole of his right foot pressed against the inside of his left knee. His hands were slightly behind him on the grass, keeping him upright as he tilted back a little and turned his face upwards to the sky, either unaware of how closely he was being observed, or simply uncaring. Finally, he seemed to grow sick of the silence.

"So. We're not being blown up or drowned right now. I'd say that this is probably a good time to talk, wouldn't you?"

It was a difficult question. If they talked, there was a good chance that it would go very wrong very fast, and one or both of them would end up yelling. On the other hand, there was too much that Clay needed to know. "OK, but if something catches fire then we're taking a rain check."

Desmond nodded. Then he asked, "What the fuck did I put in your arm, Clay?

Of course it would be this question first. Clay hesitated for a moment, trying to think of the best way to sell this to Desmond, a way that would not make him panic. In the end, though, he just decided to tell as much of the truth as he knew. "It's a Piece of Eden. Vidic sent me here to find it. There's not a lot of scripture about it, but it's believed that there was an Assassin once who had it placed around his neck as an amulet when he was near death, and it healed his wounds and allowed him to live on for many years. The day he was separated from it, his wounds came back and he died."

A quick glance at Desmond told Clay that this news had not gone down well, but the younger man managed to maintain most of his composure. "OK. OK, so where did you find this magic feather of yours?"

Clay laughed. "Right in my goddamn cell, hidden in this hole in the wall. Apparently the last known owner was this thief called The Magpie. I'm just guessing here, but if he wound up captured by the Assassins then he probably stashed it there for safekeeping. Maybe he died, maybe he just escaped and never came back for it."

"Maybe he decided it was more trouble than it was worth." Desmond gave an unhappy laugh. "I can't believe this. We know that most people go insane just from fucking touching the Pieces of Eden, and now you've got one of them _inside_ you. And I put it there?" Desmond suddenly jumped up and moved so that he was kneeling directly in front of Clay, staring at him fretfully, angrily. "You should have told me. Jesus, if I'd known, I would have..."

"You would have what? Let me bleed to death?" Clay snapped, feeling his temper rising. "It saved my goddamn life, you idiot. It saved _both_ our lives."

"Are you talking about the river? Because..."

"Yeah, I'm talking about the river! I don't remember much but I do remember grabbing onto you and putting every ounce of energy I had into keeping you alive." Desmond's face softened a little at that, though the concern didn't fade at all, and Clay felt a small but powerful rush of affection for him that he did his best to ignore. "We already know that people were able to exert their will through the Apples, to distort people's minds. I think I must have used the Piece of Eden somehow, expanded its influence to protect you. Look at yourself, look!" Clay slapped Desmond gently on the shoulder with the back of his hand. "You should be dead right now and instead you look like you just got back from the health spa!" He stood up, suddenly desirous of a height advantage.

Desmond followed him stubbornly. "Yes, and that freaks me out! You know as well as I do that these things never come for free. What if..."

"What if _nothing_!" Clay yelled, infuriated by Desmond's attitude. "I'm alive and you're alive, and that's all that matters." He stopped for a moment and struggled to control his temper, to slow his breathing. "I feel fine. Better than fine, but I promise, hey..." He reached out to touch Desmond's face, but stopped at the angry flinch it elicited. "I promise, if I start feeling messed up in any way, I'll tell you."

At last, Desmond seemed to relax fractionally. "Good. Because we need to be honest with each other, or I don't see us getting through this." He didn't clarify whether he was talking about their lives or their relationship. Looking warily at Clay, he added, "I think it's your turn to ask a question."

There were too many, and the one truly burning question that he had also happened to be the one he was afraid to ask. Clay opted for something a little easier. "What happened to you after the fire? How did you get here? What did your father tell you about me?"

Desmond suddenly drew in a sharp breath, and it was at that moment that Clay realised something: Bill Miles was almost certainly dead. Desmond may have raised the alarm before the bombs fell, but they had both seen the sheer number of people left behind to die in the explosions, and Bill would have been deep inside the main part of the castle. A muscle ticking slowly in his jaw, Desmond swallowed and then answered. "I escaped through the window. I remember waking up and seeing Shaun." His face crumpled at the memory. "He was at the infirmary. God, he looked so shocked to see me awake. Shocked, and kind of happy, I guess. He yelled at me and said that we needed to get going, and then..."

"I know," Clay interrupted, not wanting to force Desmond to relive that part. "How did you escape?"

"Through the window." His breathing was coming a little easier, now that the worst part of the memory was over. "My legs barely worked and I think the Abstergo agents were right behind me but I just kept running, and I found a group of Assassins who'd managed to get away from the fire. We hid in the sewers like rats, and the next morning my ... my dad found us. He looked really beaten down, and he said that America wasn't safe for us any more. We flew out here on a small plane, straight to Masyaf. The Syrian Assassins are supporting the rebels in the war, and there are rumours that Bashar al-Assad might be allied with the Templars, might even be one himself. Then there were the rumours that..."

"That I might be as well." Clay kept his face impassive.

"You disappeared after the fire," Desmond continued, his voice more controlled now as his eyes roved over Clay's face. "No one really liked you, and they needed a scapegoat. You were pretty high on the list of potential traitors anyway, and then someone recovered CCTV footage of you walking into Abstergo HQ."

"What about Rebecca? Is she alive."

"Yeah, she's still in the states. She came to your defence, insisted that you were with her when the fire started. They dismissed that pretty quickly, just said that you could have set a timed explosive, and that it was very_ convenient_ that you were in a position to escape when it all went down." Desmond's mouth tightened bitterly. "I told them it was bullshit, of course. I knew that you might decide to betray the Assassins, but you'd never try to kill me. The only time I ever believed it might be true was when..."

"When I told you I'd been working for Abstergo." Clay was no longer angered by Desmond's reaction, nor even by being called a psychopath by the one man who'd always insisted he was sane. None of that had been real: this, the two of them in the grass and under the sun, that was real. "So what about...?"

"Woah, hang on," Desmond reprimanded. "I think it's my turn." His eyes were suddenly hard and defensive, and he began pacing back and forth, swinging his arms a little, looking almost predatory. Finally he bit out the words, "You tried to kill yourself. Not just tried, you nearly succeeded."

It was agonising, but Clay forced himself not to look away from the pain in Desmond's eyes. "That's not a question."

"Why?"

"I told you, I fucking hate fire. I've spent the last couple of weeks imagining what it would be like to burn to death, and I didn't really care for the idea. I'm not suicidal. You have no idea how pissed I got when I thought it was all over."

The angle of Desmond's shoulders fell visibly. "If I ever found you like that again, I don't..."

"You won't."

"Good."

It was Clay's turn, and he felt a sudden urge to skip this final question and simply push Desmond into the grass and consummate their reunion. But he could still sense a wall between them and knew that it was there because of him, because of the guilt gnawing in his chest, and he couldn't _not_ know this.

"How much do you remember?" he said softly, not looking at Desmond, not at first. "From when you were in the coma, I mean?"

The silence that followed the question stretched on for so long that eventually Clay had to give in and glance over, glimpsing a look of extreme vulnerability on Desmond's face. As soon as he fell under observation, he closed his mouth and drew himself back together, adopting a calm tone of voice. "All of it," he said. "I remember all of it, and I know I asked you for complete honesty, so I'm not going to lie to you, but don't make me tell you what it was like."

"Why not?"

"It wouldn't be good for me."

Plan B was to extract the information through his own confession. It wasn't going to be pleasant, but that's why it was Plan B. "I visited you every day, at first," Clay said, forcing himself to keep looking into Desmond's face. "The doctors told me that sometimes coma patients can hear what's going on around them, even if they can't respond to it. I ... I got it into my head that if I said the right thing, used the right combination of words or said them in the right way, that you'd wake up and you'd be yourself again." He shook his head. "It was stupid. I had my head completely up my ass but I was so confident that I could do it. So I talked to you, every day, for at least a couple of hours. Even held your hand, in case you could feel it."

Desmond glanced away, over at the river, then back again so that their eyes met. He didn't say anything, and he didn't appear to be particularly moved by Clay's story. If anything, there was a great deal of tension in his body.

Clay continued. "I really wanted to be all sweet and attentive and patient but..." He took a deep, unstable breath. "I just got really mad instead. I'd be lying in bed at night for hours with my fucking fists clenched, just _so_ angry. I wasn't really used to it, because I'd spent so long just being detached and not caring, but it was like something inside me that just refused to go away. So I'd pick fights with your dad, with the other Assassins, with Shaun, until pretty soon all I'd have to do was walk into a room and people would just leave. Then I'd visit you, figuring that at least I'd be able to calm down if you were there. Except you _weren't_ there, you'd just lie there and you wouldn't fucking respond, no matter what I did or said."

The ghost of that anger was rising up in him now as he relived the memories, and Clay ground his teeth, forcing himself to continue. "I kept coming to see you, and I kept talking to you, but underneath it all was this urge to tear everything to fucking pieces, including us. So I..." Clay finally lowered his head, unable to look at Desmond. "I said ... some awful shit to you, Desmond. Just ... just this really vile stuff, not the truth but what I _wished_ was the truth. I didn't want to be in love with you any more. I wanted to go back to just being me and not caring about anyone else in the world, so I did my best to poison the well and then I left and didn't come back, and three weeks later you were gone."

It felt like an exorcism. Now that it was all said, Clay was gasping for breath, nowhere near brave enough to look at Desmond's face and see his reaction. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the man still standing quietly in the grass, unmoving, his eyes on Clay.

"I know."

Clay looked up sharply.

"The doctors weren't lying. I could hear you, when you spoke to me."

"All of it?"

"All of it."

Clay felt cold all over. "How can you stand to look at me now?"

Desmond stepped forward and gently ran his fingertips up Clay's neck and over his jaw, lifting his head so that they were eye-to-eye. "Because we're stronger than a coma. We're stronger than a few words said in anger. We're stronger than a misunderstanding. I'll always come back to you, just like you always come back for me. That's who we are."

The distance between them closed and just like that they were together again, locked against one another with Desmond's fingers tangling in Clay's hair. The breath left him as he was pushed down onto the grass, and he felt a full-body shiver as Desmond carefully undid the two remaining buttons on his shirt, pulled the material aside and rubbed his face over Clay's torso on the way back up to his mouth, stubble scratching against his skin tantalisingly. Clay wanted this so badly that it hurt, but he was still unsure, still afraid to put his hands on Desmond. When their lips met he whispered, desperately,_ can I? can I? _with his hands hovering just above the bare skin of Desmond's back. Desmond pressed down against him, kissing him and murmuring _yes_ against his mouth.

He could feel the ribs through Desmond's skin now in a way that he never had before, and Clay made a mental note to take him out for dinner, take him to the finest steak restaurant in the world and feed him until the hollow places left behind by the coma disappeared. Otherwise, the path of his spine was just the same as it had always been: dipping down from his shoulders to the shallow counterpoint where his stomach was flat against Clay's own, before rising once more into the curve of his buttocks.

Clay closed his eyes and flexed upwards, gripping a handful of short dark hair and gifting his tongue into the comfort of Desmond's mouth. It occurred to him that after a year and a half they were probably both out of practice, but he had a feeling that they were going to be just fine.


	11. Chapter 11

**Introductory note**: Warning! This chapter contains sexual themes from the start. And by that I of course mean rampant shaggery. In a field.

* * *

There were still aftershocks going through Desmond's body, but they began to get farther and farther apart and Clay could feel the tension in the calves that gripped his hips draining away to leave behind boneless relaxation. In an echo of their old sleeping position, Desmond had one hand splayed across the middle of Clay's chest, and was using that arm to keep his body upright from where he was seated at Clay's groin. Finally, with a grateful groan, the last shudder left him and he dropped forward gracefully so that his forehead rested on the back of his hand. Clay shifted enough to unlock them but kept his knees bent so that the tops of his thighs stayed pressed against the highs of Desmond's buttocks. He stroked a hand idly through Desmond's sweat-drenched hair and stared up at the small clouds drifting through the blue sky overhead, interrupted at one point by a flock of Syrian military planes flying overhead in a V formation. After a while, he started to laugh.

Desmond kept his head resting on his hand, but angled it so that he was looking up at Clay. "What is it?"

"Nothing. Just ... If you'd asked me when I was 22, where I thought I would be in ten years..."

He didn't need to finish. Desmond was already grinning at the joke. "Beats a desk job as a programmer, right?"

"At least I can tick 'sex in a field' off my bucket list." He was suddenly reminded of something important. "Fuck. We didn't use a condom."

"We didn't _have_ a condom."

"I got carried away, I didn't think..."

"Jesus Christ, Kaczmarek." Desmond rolled off of him at last and lay beside him in the grass, one arm slung under his head for support, waving the other hand in Clay's line of sight as he ticked off items with his fingers. "About twelve hours ago we both got hit by a bomb, fell down a cliff, and got washed about ten miles downstream. Now you're fretting because you think the _sex_ was unsafe?"

He had a point, but Clay wasn't willing to concede it. Instead he rolled onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow and smiling down fondly at Desmond. Then he slapped him smartly on the forehead and scooted quickly out of range, leaving Desmond groaning in outrage and clutching the affected area with both hands.

"Ow! You fucker!"

Clay climbed shakily to his feet, smirking a little at Desmond's sulky expression, then watching it fade away as the man decided he hadn't the energy to sustain a grudge. "You gonna get up?" Clay asked.

"In a bit, I don't think my legs are working just yet." Desmond stretched out on the grass and closed his eyes. He had a tendency, at least as far as Clay's experience could testify, towards shatteringly intense orgasms that generally left him weak as a kitten afterwards. Desmond somehow managed to come with his entire body: his toes would curl, his neck would arch, his fingers would bite down fiercely, and the noises he made were almost akin to someone begging for mercy. Before he'd joined the Assassins, Clay had attended quite a few rock concerts, and watching Desmond climax was not unlike the moment where the band would reach the final, screaming chorus that the song had been building up to, right down the intense urge to shout encouragement throughout it. More often that not, the whole experience would forcibly tear Clay's own release out of him in a blinding rush that left him nearly as helpless as Desmond.

Of course, they used to have the luxury of a nearby shower.

Clay looked down at the mess on his chest and stomach, then directed a scowl at Desmond. "Great, now I gotta go back in that goddamn river for a wash."

Desmond didn't open his eyes. "That's nice. If you see any fish, bring them back up here. I could do with some breakfast."

The words brought the reality of their situation back as Clay walked down to the river, not bothering to stop for his clothes. He was beginning to regret his refusal to eat what the Assassins had brought him, and was becoming light-headed from hunger. His Assassin reflexes were good enough that he could no doubt catch a few fish without too much trouble, but that would not keep them going for long. They needed to find the nearest settlement and obtain some currency, preferably by simple theft rather than murder. Then they needed to get out of Syria and away from this war.

Clay couldn't be entirely sure of their current location, but the river flowed to the north-west, towards the Mediterranean Sea. Beyond that coast lay Cyprus: land of the gullible tourist, where they could either find someone to forge passports or, as a last resort, go to the American embassy and beg for transportation back home. Their best bet would be to continue north-west until they reached the port city of Latakia, find someone with a boat, and throw enough money or threats at them to gain passage to Cyprus.

Hell, it wasn't much of a plan, but at least he would return to Desmond with _something_.

He reached the river bank and walked in up to his ankles, relaxing a little when he realised the water had already been warmed a little by the midday sun. Clay stooped down and cupped his hand, dipping it into the river and bringing a small pool of slightly murky water to his lips, sucking it down gratefully. He repeated this a dozen times, wishing he had some kind of receptacle with which to bring water back for Desmond. When his thirst was slaked he rubbed water over his front and sluiced the pearly fluid away, rubbing it from the sparse hair on his chest, rinsing his hand when it was done. Finally he turned over his right hand to look at his wrist, pressing at the flesh gently with the fingers of his left hand.

Clay didn't know what he expected to see. Glowing lines in his skin, perhaps, or a warm spot where the Piece of Eden was buried. His skin was the same as ever though, save for the fact that it was a lot more tanned than it had ever been. He looked down at his reflection in the water, filling in gaps where the water blurred it. Same old blond hair and blue eyes, skin dark where it'd had prolonged exposure to the sun and very fair everywhere else.

"Look at you," he said to himself with a wry grin. "Kaczmarek of Arabia."

He allowed his gaze to travel over the water, until he found an incongruous dark shape in the water. No, not _in_ the water, but reflected upon its surface. Clay followed it upwards to its source, and froze.

"Hello again, John Turner."

Fadel was standing on the opposite bank, surveying Clay coolly, apparently unfazed by his nudity. Determined not to be the self-conscious one here, Clay straightened up, allowing the river water to swirl around his lower legs.

"Fadel."

"Would you prefer it if I called you Kaczmarek?"

Clay didn't reply. He was turning the facts over and over in his brain, old engineering and programming instincts slotting things into the only places where they fitted. Finally he allowed himself a wry smile, and spoke in English.

"I thought I was so clever, figuring out that you weren't really a defector. I never worked out why you were so dedicated to the Syrian army, though. I thought that maybe you had a family back home, a wife and kids or something, and you wanted to make sure they had the protection of the state."

The Kurd lifted his chin a little. The stubble he'd grown had been removed now that the pretence was no longer required, and his moustache stood proudly on his upper lip. "I _do_ have a wife, Kaczmarek. Children as well."

"That's not the reason, though." Clay shook his head and laughed, helplessly, without humour. "I should have known. How coincidental was it that I'd been in this country five minutes before I ran into a group of people who just happened to be going to Masyaf as well? Practically an escort. You're a fucking Templar, aren't you, Fadel?"

The man glanced over his shoulder, presumably at where Desmond was still lying in the grass, then back into Clay's face. "We were given the mission to retrieve Desmond Miles from Masyaf by posing as defectors. At the time, we were not even sure that he was even at the castle, and no guarantee that he and his father weren't being kept hidden even from the Syrian Free Army. Then we got a call from America to say that they were sending an old friend of the target, someone who would be able to draw him out. They fed you some vague story about finding a mysterious lost artefact, one that probably doesn't even exist, and then they sent you to me."

Fadel's tone was not gloating or mocking. He spoke as though he had simply decided it was time for Clay to be given full disclosure. He spoke to him as though they were colleagues.

"I want to thank you," he continued. "For keeping Desmond Miles alive. I do not know how you managed it, but I would have been in a great deal of trouble, had I reported his death."

"You think I saved him for you?" Clay asked in a low, dangerous voice. "You think I'm going to let you within fifty feet of him?"

Fadel didn't smile. "I believe I already am. I did not come here to kill or kidnap either one of you, Kaczmarek. I wish to reason with you, to offer you our help." He paused, as though giving Clay a moment to try and shout him down, then continued.

"The Assassins are being systematically wiped out and disbanded, even as we speak. The leaders are being removed, the strongholds destroyed, and those Assassins who survive are being recruited by Abstergo. Their skills are extremely valuable to us, and we do not wish to waste them."

Clay laughed in disbelief at the stupidity of this plan. "You think you can kill their leaders, destroy their homes, and then try to convince the Assassins to switch sides in a rivalry as old as the human race? You people are insane. The Assassins are cultists, they'll die before they betray their creed."

"No creed is strong enough to truly encompass a human heart. Every person on this planet has something that they desire, and everyone has a loved one for whom they fear. It is not so difficult, really - we are merely putting the old practice of carrot-and-stick motivation into practice. Perhaps the Assassins who have joined us tell themselves that their hearts are not in it, that they are merely waiting for an opportunity to betray the Templars, to shake us from our foundations. We will let them believe that, but years will go by, the Brotherhood of Assassins will crumble to ashes, and its old members will forget why they were ever so loyal to a dead cause. Their propaganda has them believing that they are the 'good guys' in this war, but the fight between the Templars and Assassin has never been anything except a power feud based on differences of belief. The only right side is that which emerges victorious."

Clay stared at him, mainly shocked at having heard the usually reserved Fadel speak at such length. "You don't think you're fighting on the good side, then?"

Fadel shrugged. "I am a soldier. I stopped believing in the notion of good and evil sides long ago. I have ordered bombs to be dropped on children for the sake of my government, and I have seen what is left behind when the rebels have finished torturing people. It has ... sharpened my understanding."

"If you don't believe in anything, then why do you follow the Templar's orders like a little sheepdog?"

"I never claimed to believe in nothing. I believe in God. And I believe in power." Fadel looked him up and down, very carefully. "Consider yourself, Clay. You are naked. You have no identification. You have no means of transport. You are in the middle of a war zone. Come with me and both you and your friend will be back in America by the end of the day."

"Sure, in an Abstergo holding cell."

"You would not be taken prisoner. Rather ... The Templars will offer you shelter, food, and work. Yours to take or leave as you wish. As I've explained, we now prefer to entice new members with safety, security, and luxury, rather than simply beat them into submission."

Clay considered it. He'd repeatedly claimed indifference to both Templar and Assassin aims, but there was still an old instinctive curl of distaste in his gut at the thought of Abstergo and what they had turned him into. Yet this could be their only chance to escape Syria and return to safety. But even if Clay agreed to it, how would he convince...

"Clay?"

Desmond must have spotted the encounter taking place, for he'd paused only long enough to throw on some underwear before he came running over. Clay glanced over at him, but his mind was elsewhere. Fadel was here, but where were Khoury and Al Mahainy?

Desmond's eyes widened in recognition. "You..."

If Fadel was smart, and he was, he would have instructed them to keep out of sight, with guns trained on both the men. Right now, Clay and Desmond were probably being observed down the scope of a rifle. Clay drew in a sharp breath.

He and Desmond yelled and moved at the same time.

"You son of a_ bitch_!"

"Desmond, _no_!"


	12. Chapter 12

It was easier now that he knew he had done it once, to reach into the place where the Piece of Eden rested and _lean_ his mind upon it. Clay had his arms hooked around Desmond's elbows and was holding him back, preventing him from dashing across the river and attacking Fadel, but he couldn't be sure that the other soldiers wouldn't simply shoot at them as a precaution. And so Clay identified the almost-imperceptible band of something that was the artefact's protection, and stretched it a little further until he was sure that Desmond was surrounded by it as well. It was a shame, then, that he had no way of communicating what he had done.

"Let me go, Clay," Desmond snarled, bucking fiercely against him in a manner very reminiscent of what they'd been doing half an hour ago.

"Not a good idea right now."

"That son of a_ bitch_ killed my dad!" Desmond screamed, directing the accusation at Fadel. "He killed my dad, Clay, he killed everyone at Masyaf and he tried to kill _you_."

"Clay was not our target," Fadel said, just loud enough to be heard over Desmond's thrashing in the water. "You should listen to him, and calm yourself. I am not your enemy."

"Then I'll _make_ you my enemy," Desmond yelled back, twisting in Clay's grasp again but failing to free himself. In response, Clay ran his hand up the front of Desmond's bare chest, braced an elbow against his sternum and eased his head back by spreading his fingers just below Desmond's jaw and exerting a firm pressure. When Clay's mouth was close enough to Desmond's ear, he began to whisper softly.

"He has friends, Desmond, and they have guns. If they shoot us then they'll know about my little secret, and then we'll be in real trouble." He fixed his eyes on Fadel as he murmured the next words very softly. "If it comes to it, I'll kill him for you. Or I'll hold him down and let you kill him. But we have to play this_ smart_."

It was unclear whether his words got through to Desmond, or whether his friend was simply still too weak from the atrophying effects of the coma to keep up the struggle. Whatever the reason, he stopped straining against the cage of Clay's arms, and Clay ratcheted down the tension in his muscles until he was sure that the fight was over, then slowly released Desmond. He noticed that the man was shaking, and laid a hand on his shoulder in what he hoped was a calming gesture before looking back up at Fadel.

The soldier was watching them with narrow eyes, and for the first time Clay realised that they were in a country where homosexuality was a crime. What had happened in the field not so long ago was an arrestable offence, and Fadel had just seen him pressing Desmond's near-naked body against himself like it was the most natural thing in the world (it was). Perfect; one more secret they needed to keep.

"Don't mind him," he said conversationally to Fadel. "You drop a few dozen bombs on a guy's head and suddenly he starts getting all aggravated."

Fadel ignored that. "Will you come with us?" he asked again.

"Go to hell and rot there," was Desmond's snarled response, and Clay tightened his grip fractionally, just in case.

"You can quit pretending we have a choice," he said to Fadel. "Tell me, where are your friends, and how quickly will they shoot us down if we try to run?"

"Khoury and Al Mahainy? They're searching further downriver for your bodies. One of our planes captured footage of the two of you falling into the river, and I wished to recover your remains as evidence for my superiors." Fadel took a step forward. "I meant what I told you. I am giving you a choice."

Desmond turned his head and looked at Clay, eyes gleaming. "He's alone."

"Yeah, and he's also armed and wearing clothes. What are you going to do, slap him to death with your dick?" To Fadel, Clay added, "We need some time to talk about this. I'd also prefer not to freeze to death in this river."

The Kurd nodded in assent. "I will return in half an hour. I hope that you will still be here." He turned and began to walk away.

Clay stared after him suspiciously, keeping his hand on Desmond's shoulder and feeling it shake with rage and frustration. It seemed so unlikely that Fadel would, after finding them, genuinely give them the option of running. Surely those can't have been the orders he had received from his superiors.

But perhaps Fadel was more than just a Templar and a soldier. He was relatively young, and a promotion to sergeant was not given lightly by any army, which meant that he had no doubt proved his worth as a leader and tactician in the past. If Clay and Desmond went with him willingly, they would become far more useful and manageable than if they were carried all the way back to Hama in chains, for it would be the first step towards recruitment.

They returned to the shack and dressed, Clay giving what was left of his shirt to Desmond and settling bare-chested on the floor inside the building. Desmond buttoned up the shirt and then began pacing, too fired up to sit down. He looked wretched with anger and grief, and Clay was struck for the first time by the realisation that Desmond must have truly loved his father on some level, no matter how much he may have disliked him.

Desmond was the first to speak. "Don't you dare tell me you're considering going off with that asshole."

"It's an attractive offer," Clay replied enigmatically. "Our other option is to head for Cyprus. But first we have to get to Latakia without getting ourselves shot or starving to death along the way, then find a way to cross about a hundred miles of ocean, then sneak past border patrol, then convince the US government to let us fly back without any ID."

"What about the Syrian Assassins?"

"You mean the ones that haven't been reduced to a smear on the rubble over at Masyaf." Clay regretted the harsh words when he saw Desmond flinch, and tried to soften his tone. "How would we even find them? And if we did, how would we stop them from shooting me in the face as soon as I'm close enough to get recognised? I'm a traitor, remember?" he added bitterly.

"You're not a traitor!" Desmond dropped to one knee in front of Clay, trying to meet his eye. "I'll vouch for you."

"Oh great, the Assassins who might not even exist will be totally amenable to that when we magically find them." Clay finally looked up and met Desmond's eyes. "Look, I just want to get you somewhere safe and right now ... Right now Fadel's looking like our best option for that. We wouldn't be joining the Templars, just using them."

"I don't care! He's a murderer, and I don't trust him," Desmond snapped. "I'm not going with him, Clay."

A heavy weight settled in Clay's chest, but he didn't let his misgivings show on his face. Instead he simply nodded and stood up, grabbing Desmond's hand to bring him along. "Alright. We'll make our own way."

Desmond looked surprised at having won the argument so easily. "Thank you."

"Thank me when we're out of Syria and still in one piece. Come on."

* * *

Clay had half expected to find Fadel and the others waiting for them when he and Desmond left the shack, but he was left surprised and somewhat uneasy when he found the field outside empty. He had a reflex action to stop and grab bags of belongings before they set out, but then realised that the only possessions he had were the clothes he was wearing, which currently consisted of pants, shoes, and nothing else. Desmond was little better off, his fatigues torn and tattered by the path of the river. By turning their backs upon the help offered by the Templars, they had doomed themselves to a hard and perilous journey, and were forced to set out with empty stomachs.

They followed the sun north-west until they reached a village called Al Qadmus. The people there stared for a while at Clay's pale skin and their dishevelled appearance, but Clay pleaded with a sheep farmer until he gave them water and a little food, along with an old shirt to keep the sun off Clay's back. Probably he believed that they were members of the rebel army; many of Syria's citizens were now on the side of the revolution, even if they would not say so openly.

They walked back into the countryside that night and slept on the grass, under the stars. Another day's walking brought them to a Baniyas, a port city about thirty miles down the coast from Latakia. They walked through the streets with dry, cracked lips and dust-covered faces, blending in well with the beggars and street urchins that lined the streets. Clay couldn't look at Desmond any more - couldn't look at the weariness in his eyes and the determination in his jaw - because if he did, he would kiss him, and then they'd both be in a heap of trouble. Instead, he allowed their knuckles to brush together occasionally as they walked: brief sparks of contact that he hoped would be understood.

Latakia was not a fat city, but opportunities were better here than they had seen before. Clay was able to successfully pickpocket a few merchants as they hurried home with their wares, gaining them a precious budget of a few thousand Syrian pounds.

It was in spending the first of this that he learned something interesting.

"Come on, we'll take a single room, my friend can sleep on the floor," he argued with the frowning hostel owner, who had an aggravating habit of shaking his head whenever Clay was talking.

"Two people, two beds. Pay up front," he said for the fifteenth time.

"What's he saying?" Desmond asked in English, leaning his tired head against the wall.

Clay looked over at him. "You don't understand him?"

Desmond shook his head, and suddenly gave off a distinct sense that he was drawing back into himself, uncomfortable with the line of questioning that the first inquiry threatened.

"But I thought Altaïr..."

"You want the room or not?" the hostel owner demanded impatiently.

"Fine, fine! I'll be looking out for chocolates on the pillow, though, the amount you're charging us," Clay goaded, tossing the bills down ungraciously onto the counter.

There were no chocolates on the pillow. The room had one small window, two beds with wiry iron frames, and very thin walls. Desmond walked through the door and immediately did a sort of belly-flop onto the nearest bed, immediately groaning and clutching at bits of himself when he landed.

"Good mattress?" Clay asked with a grin.

"I think I just broke my nose."

"Come on, get undressed. You smell bad enough as it is."

"Thanks for that."

Clay got out of his clothes first and helped Desmond with the rest of his. There were two beds but they only used one.

By the time Clay got settled in, Desmond appeared to be asleep already, his eyes closed and his breathing steady. Clay suddenly had a nasty flashback to the many days he'd spent in the Den infirmary, watching the unmoving face with its still eyelids and Roman nose. Suddenly uneasy, he traced a finger over the bridge of it until Desmond twitched his face grumpily in response. Smiling in relief, Clay brushed a thumb over Desmond's full lower lip, then over the scar that split the left side of his mouth, until Desmond shook him off once more.

"Quit it!" he groaned. "'M tryna sleep."

"Sorry. Just checking."

He didn't explain, but he got the sense that Desmond understood anyway. Clay found a comfortable resting place for his hand just curled against the top of Desmond's chest, a couple of knuckles resting against his clavicle, and tried to sleep. Instead, he found himself staring at Desmond's sleeping form in the soft, silvery light that filtered through the window and wondered what the coma had been like for him, and why he was so reluctant to talk about it now, and how he had forgotten the Arabic he'd learnt as Altaïr. No confession came forth, though, so Clay delivered one of his own.

"I gotta say, Desmond. I really have no fucking clue what I'm doing."

It was unclear whether Desmond was still awake, or whether he was talking in his sleep. "What else is new?" he mumbled against the pillow.

"I mean it. We are right bang in the middle of the dictionary definition of trouble here."

Desmond didn't reply, and Clay realised that he definitely had fallen asleep. He closed his eyes, curled a little closer, and let unconsciousness take him too.

They never made it to Cyprus.

They never even made it to Latakia.

The past caught up with them before they even made it out of the hostel.


	13. Chapter 13

**Introductory note:**_ For the remainder of this story the previously mentioned sex and trigger warnings apply. Happy reading!_

* * *

There was no clock in the room and it wasn't like either of them was wearing a watch, so Clay didn't know what time it was when he woke up. His first instinct, however, was to clap a hand over his mouth and muffle the cry of pain that was threatening to tear out of him. His skin was burning, as though there was something inside his very cells that was struggling to escape, and he strained against the arm holding him down as though it belonged to a stranger. Finally, when he thought he could control himself enough, he rolled very carefully away from Desmond, put his feet down and staggered into the adjoining bathroom. He took one glance back to make sure that he hadn't woken the other man, and then shut the door very quietly and released a long gasp of breath.

Leaning on the wall for support, and then the sink, Clay looked up into the mirror expecting to see his skin burning, or breaking out in rash. He swallowed a groan at the sight of his face, which was covered in fine, glowing symbols that looked suspiciously familiar. Looking down at himself, he found that they extended all over his body, but were glowing most fiercely on his right forearm.

Another wave of agony burst through him and Clay dropped to his knees, closing his lips against the cries trying to escape his mouth. It was like a cramp all over his body, but more than anything else it was like something suppressed and trying to break free, and there was a pounding through Clay's head that soon became a litany of words.

_Cut it out, cut it out, cut it out..._

Yes, this was too much, he needed to get this thing out of him. Vaguely Clay heard a warning at the back of his mind, remembering the story of the last person who had separated himself from the amulet, but the fear of that was so far from his mind, and this discomfort was too immediate.

The room had come with soap, toothpaste, brushes and razors, and it was for the latter item that Clay reached. He broke the flimsy plastic apart with his bare hands to get at the fine, dull metal inside and quickly pressed it against his arm where the Piece of Eden was buried, digging it into his flesh.

Which didn't break.

"Oh come _on_," Clay hissed under his breath, sawing the razor desperately over his arm. It was hard to tell whether it even hurt or not, but it certainly wasn't having any effect on his skin. It was like trying to cut through a cement block with a plastic spoon.

_Cut it out, get it out..._

It was as though the pent up energy in the Piece of Eden had reached a maximum limit, and was now seeking any kind of outlet. Clay wondered if it would tear him apart in order to get away from him, and suddenly felt himself angered by this idea. He focused that anger upon the mysterious artefact inside of him and pressed down upon it with his will.

The metaphor of a lion tamer didn't quite work here: this was more like an ant trying to scold a woolly mammoth into obedience. Clay could feel the pressure increasing in his head as he battled with the Piece of Eden, but his resolve only solidified with the struggle and eventually he felt a shifting as some of the power drew back from the periphery of his skin, grudgingly back to its source, being forced back into a place that did not have the capacity to hold it all. For a second, the glowing lines vanished from Clay's skin and that was all he needed. With new strength, he stabbed a pointed right angle of the razor down into his flesh and dragged it in a line up towards his elbow.

There was pain, sure, but more than anything else there was a sense of relief. All thought of digging out the Piece of Eden left him as he felt the energy burst out again, along a channel this time, and the blood had barely any time to spill over the linoleum before the edges of the wound were closed again, healed as though they'd never been there. The Piece of Eden purred happily, a sense of satedness that coursed through Clay and forced a smile onto his face. The pressure was still there, a little lessened now, and so he drew back the protective shield once more and slashed at his arm two, three times before the dam broke again and tiny gems of power rushed forth to heal the damage.

When Clay came back to himself, he felt at peace, the feather in his arm settled back into a state of dormancy. There was no evidence of what had happened save for the blood on the floor, and he could clean that up easily, remove any traces of it so that Desmond wouldn't catch on.

Clay hesitated over that for a second. Did he want Desmond to know? They'd agreed to be honest with each other. And this _thing_ was nothing, it was a small price to pay for invincibility, for the security and protection that the Piece of Eden offered. In comparison to that, a little bloodletting was barely worth mentioning.

_If it doesn't mean anything, then tell him._

No. Desmond would overreact. He would be worried and hurt, and the man had already had enough worry and hurt to last a lifetime. Clay would keep this to himself because it wasn't dishonesty, after all, it was just ... selective disclosure.

Clay nodded at this with finality, and then gathered a handful of toilet roll and began to mop away the evidence.

* * *

The adrenaline buzz had kept him up for the rest of the night, so it was a relief when Desmond finally stirred the next morning. Clay leaned over him and began kissing him gently until the slackness in Desmond's lips vanished and he started to respond hungrily, grabbing the nape of Clay's neck where the pale blonde hair gave way to golden brown skin.

"Damn," Desmond moaned, pulling away a little. "I probably have morning breath."

"Don't care."

"_You_ have morning breath."

"Deal with it."

But Clay abandoned Desmond's mouth a few seconds later and began exploring the rest of him, thrilling from the seemingly boundless fountain of energy inside him: something that was in his very veins and urging him on, seeking expenditure. He moved down the bed and hooked one of Desmond's legs over his shoulder before drawing a long line upwards with his tongue.

"Oh fuuuck," Desmond moaned in a long, low, blissed-out note, pressing his head back into the pillow before lifting it to get a better look. "I thought you said this kind of stuff was illegal here."

"All the more reason to do it." Clay looked up at him and cocked a half-smile whilst lowering his voice by a few octaves. "Taboo is sexy."

"Yeah? How about twelve years in a Syrian prison, is that s- oh Jesus, do that again."

Desmond went back to sleep afterwards, and Clay realised that they were going to end up paying for another night. As he messed up the sheets on the second bed to give it the look of having been slept in, he heard the sounds of Baniyas coming to life, which included the distant rattle of gunfire. It pressed the danger of their situation back home once more, and Clay realised that he needed to get out of the hotel and acquire more money, enough to bribe their way from Baniyas to Latakia and from there to Cyprus. He was hesitant to leave Desmond, but knew that he would work better alone, and would only be gone for a few hours at most.

On the way out he passed by a cleaning trolley, and tossed the bloody, broken razor into the trash bag, feeling a weight lifted off his chest that was much like the sensation of pulling off a successful pickpocketing manoeuvre.

He was still whistling jauntily when he walked into the foyer of the hotel, caught a brief glimpse of the owner hiding behind his newspaper, and then felt a hand clamp down over his mouth and drag him backwards, through a door, into a room. Clay immediately threw one of his elbows back but his assailant's stomach was not close enough for impact, and soon a second pair of hands grabbed him by the wrists and pulled them tightly together.

Two guys. Well, this wasn't so bad. He could take two guys.

Then a third man came into the room and closed the door behind him.

Clay stared for a moment, then dropped his head and began to laugh uncontrollably.

"What's so funny?" the third man asked.

"You..." Clay paused for a moment to catch his breath. "You fucking Mileses. You're like cockroaches."

Bill surveyed him coolly. He was wearing slacks and a pristine white cotton shirt with the first couple of buttons undone, and as far as was visible he had no burn marks or even scratches. On the other side of spectrum, Clay was wearing the accumulation of three days road dirt and currently smelled like a brothel. "Is Desmond alive?" the older Miles asked.

"Of course he's alive. I take better care of him than you do."

"Where is he?"

"How about we start with how the hell are you still talking after getting a shit ton of bombs dropped on your head?"

Bill nodded almost imperceptibly and there was a click somewhere to the left of Clay's head. He allowed his gaze to slide sideways and saw the muzzle of a gun far too close for comfort. He swallowed hard. Probably he could survive a bullet to the head in his current state, but that wasn't a theory that he was particularly keen to test.

"How about we don't?" Bill countered, his tone still neutral. "Tell me where my son is."

Clay steeled himself for a blow as he asked, "What are you going to do to him?"

It might have been petty, but it was satisfying to watch Bill Miles bristle at that. "What is that supposed to mean? I'm his father, I want to protect him."

"Bang-up job you've been doing so far."

Bill took a step closer, his face changing colour a little. "_You_ were the one who brought Ahmed Fadel and his cronies to Masyaf, so that they could steal our information and then call down the wrath of the Syrian army on the place."

"Yeah, and if you'd have let me speak for more than two fucking seconds then maybe I would have been able to warn you!" Clay had started to yell at some point, no longer caring about the gun digging into his temple. "But you never liked listening, did ya, Bill? Lecturing is more your style, and God help anyone who tries to correct you."

Bill was backing off now, clearly regretting his loss of control and trying for reason instead. "Please, Clay," he said. "I don't want to fight with you, I never have. I'm just worried about Desmond. Tell me where he is ... please?"

Clay jerked his head a little, jostling the gun. "Call off your dogs and I'll tell you."

Bill hesitated, just for a second, but it was long enough for Clay to see everything. The man had to be certain that his son was in the hotel, as the owner would have given him descriptions of the two men who had arrived and stayed in the same room. Bill didn't need Clay any more, and had long considered him as nothing more than a barrier between himself and his son. This was a war-torn country, with innocent civilians tragically caught in the crossfire every day. Bill Miles could have Clay shot and tossed out into the street, so that Desmond could come across the body as he was being guided back to the safety of the Assassin fold. All obstacles conquered, all problems dealt with; Bill would have his son back and everything would be right with the world.

_Do it_, Clay thought suddenly, glaring up at the older man. _Do it, have them shoot me, just so I can see the look on your face when I'm still alive afterwards. It's high time you encountered a problem that you couldn't just assassinate away._

"Fine," Bill said once the second of hesitation was over. He nodded once more and both the other Assassins released Clay, leaving Clay to wonder whether they had some kind of nodding Morse code worked out beforehand. "I'm sorry, Clay, but until I know you can be trusted, I have to be cautious. For Desmond's sake."

Clay didn't dignify that with a reply. He scoffed, loudly and deliberately, and brushed past Bill on his way out of the room.


	14. Chapter 14

Thankfully Desmond was not only awake but also dressed when Clay walked through the door, having begged fifteen seconds of privacy off Bill. He was standing by the window, looking out onto the street, and he seemed to have combed some water through his hair with his fingers because it was looking less chaotic than it had for the past few days. He turned at the opening of the door and his face softened from frustration into relief as he strode across the room, taking Clay's face in his hands.

"Hey," he scolded gently. "Don't leave like that, I was worried."

Actually, fifteen seconds turned out to be more like two seconds as Clay heard a floorboard creaking behind him and saw the shock cross Desmond's face. The fingers dropped away from his face as though Clay had suddenly turned scalding hot, and Desmond took half a step back.

"Dad?"

Clay couldn't see it, but he knew Bill had to be smiling. "It's alright, son."

The younger Miles stared for a moment before walking forward to do something that he obviously hadn't done much before, and wasn't particularly sure how to execute properly: he hugged his father. Desmond's arms went underneath Bill's, giving Clay the unpleasant impression that the former was being ensnared somehow, and he felt a boiling in his stomach as his mouth twisted involuntarily in bitterness. He turned away, feeling suddenly voyeuristic at witnessing this twisted family moment.

"I thought you were dead," he heard Desmond say at last. "How did you get away from the bombing?"

There was a faint rustling which had to be Bill shaking his head. Clay could just about see the movement in his peripheral vision. "I wasn't there when it happened. We gave Fadel and his men a five-minute head start and then followed them, quietly of course. We lost track of you just outside Masyaf, and when we finally caught up ... you were gone." His voice was thickening, the _bastard_. God, Bill was good at this. "I thought I'd lost you, Desmond."

"I'm fine, Clay got me out, Clay..."

The second issue of his name was directed at him, and Clay couldn't keep ignoring this. He turned back and met Bill's gaze, and the son of a bitch was feigning fucking _gratitude_. If he tried to embellish the act by shaking Clay's hand, he was going to end up with a bloody nose. To try and calm the rage inside him, Clay shifted his gaze over to Desmond who looked ... happy, yes. Incredibly happy, if a little dumbfounded. But he also looked uncertain, for he knew about the animosity between Clay and his father, and it was something that they had miraculously avoided ever having to work through as a group. Hell, for the longest time Desmond had shared that animosity, but perhaps now that Bill had made his convenient comeback from the dead, all that was going to change.

It was only an accident of positioning, but in that moment Clay saw Bill and Desmond very close together, and himself standing apart from them. Two units.

"Yeah," he said at last, his voice a little hoarse. "Yeah, we got out."

* * *

There were ten Assassins in total who had survived Masyaf. They had regrouped in Baniyas and managed to arrange transport out of the country, but not back to the USA. The bombings had ripped the Assassin infrastructure to pieces back home, and what loyal Assassins were left had mostly fled to Europe, save for a few concentrated groups who were keeping their ears to the ground. The Templars had not been kidding about wanting to wipe out the Brotherhood once and for all, and the main fear now was that they would move on to the other major Assassin power bases in China, Norway, and Australia. Desmond and Clay were headed for Northern Spain. They hadn't been given much of a choice in the matter.

"What's the problem?" Desmond asked in a low voice as they travelled down a quiet Syrian road in the back of a van that they were sharing with several other people, cross-legged on some rough blankets and both silently praying that the vehicle's suspension was just taking a break and would kick in at any moment. "You said yourself that we were in deep shit before. Now we have an escape route."

"An escape route out of the frying pan and into the fire," Clay muttered darkly. He looked away from Desmond and tried to muffle the buzzing sensation running beneath his skin. It was as though his own restlessness and discomfort were resonating through the Piece of Eden and being amplified a thousandfold, until it was all he could do to refrain from dragging them both to the door of the van and jumping out.

In the darkness, Clay felt Desmond's hand slip into his own and grip tightly. He took a deep breath through his nose and then released it slowly. It didn't help.

About half an hour later, the van bumped to a halt somewhere busy; Clay could hear the cries of street merchants and the rumble of a crowd nearby. The back doors of the van opened and the dishevelled band of Assassins disembarked, squinting in the light. Desmond was out first, and he stopped for a moment and stared.

"Wow," he said softly.

Clay followed him quickly and looked in the direction which had captivated his attention. They were at a sea port, and the ocean lay before them: vast and startlingly blue in the midday sunshine.

Bill came around the side of the van to join them. "We're here."

"This isn't an airport," Clay observed astutely.

"We're travelling by boat."

"To Cyprus?"

"To Spain."

Clay took that in for a moment, reeling at the information, then rounded on Bill with a glare. "Tell me you're fucking joking."

Bill regarded him neutrally, but the other Assassins exchanged surprised glances. Clearly they were unaccustomed to witnessing Bill Miles spoken to in such a fashion. Well, Clay would be very happy to give them a lengthy demonstration.

Somewhat to his surprise, Desmond stepped to his side. "Won't that take kind of a long time?"

Bill nodded. "We'll be on the water about six days."

"And what's wrong with flying? You scared of heights, Miles?" Clay drawled.

"No, Clay. The Templars can watch every runway in the world, but coastlines are harder to control. This way is slower but safer, and we need to be cautious. "Besides..." He smiled a little. "Nothing wrong with a bit of sea air."

"Well, listen to fucking Popeye here." Clay turned to Desmond, hating himself for prodding at this fragile bond of peace, but unable to hold back. "Are you OK with this?" he demanded.

"You got a better plan?" Desmond shot back.

Clay looked from one Miles to the other and realised that he had nothing else to offer. Bristling at the idea of backing down, he walked over and stood very close to Bill, his chin raised a little. "We get our own cabin, and I'm not swabbing any decks."

Bill tipped his head to one side and adopted a quizzical expression. "Did I forget to mention that it's not a sixteenth century pirate ship?"

"Oh, you make jokes now? That's cute."

"Clay..." Desmond placed a hand firmly in the middle of his chest and pushed him back a little. "Put it away, alright?" he muttered.

It was wise advice, and Clay knew that he should take it. The path he was currently walking along could very easily lead to Desmond being forced to choose between his friend and his father, and whilst Clay was fairly confident that he would win that popularity contest, it was a choice that would leave Desmond unhappy either way. Not for the first time, Clay internally lamented the fact that meanness and spite came to him so easily, whilst things like compassion and forgiveness seemed to be out of his reach. Surely it hadn't always been that way?

But perhaps he shouldn't be putting this on himself. After all, it was hard to feel compassion for a cold, manipulative, dishonest bastard like Bill Miles.

"Fine," Clay said at last, and continued in a mockingly serene tone. "Where's the tug boat?"

* * *

The 'tug boat' turned out to be effectively a small cruise liner. Despite its modest size, the white vessel still stood out as the most glamorous ship in Latakia port, but apparently this would allow them to pass unnoticed as they traversed the sea to Northern Spain, as the Mediterranean was full of rich tourists in seaworthy hotels. No one would notice another cruise ship, and once they were close enough to their destination they would be able to disembark onto lifeboats and enter the country stealthily.

They boarded while Bill was smoothing out their cover story with the port security. The deck was smooth, varnished wood and there were even deckchairs dotted around, for the look of the thing. Inside, the corridor walls were all painted a uniform clean white, presumably in an attempt to combat the claustrophobia-inducing narrow space. A quick tour revealed that along with a bar and spa, the ship also had a well-stocked infirmary, a communications centre with at least a dozen computers and laptops, and an armoury full of blades and guns. Clay wouldn't be surprised if there were cannons onboard as well.

After they had set sail, the first thing that Desmond did was take a shower to sluice several days of dirt from his skin. Clay considered joining him, but changed his mind when he realised that the unit was just slightly larger than a coffin. He washed in the sink and grinned as he listened to the sounds of Desmond groaning in satisfaction at the hot water and vigorously rubbing soap into his hair.

"Having fun in there?" Clay called out, before pressing his damp face into a fluffy towel.

"Dude, I am so fucking clean right now. It's awesome."

"You're easily sold, you know that?" It wasn't supposed to come out as bitterly as it did, but Clay couldn't stop himself. "A bit of hot water and soap and you're right back in the honey trap."

The water stopped running. There was a moment of silence. Then the partition rattled back and Desmond stood leaning against the wall, dripping wet and solemn. It was an incredibly distracting sight, but Clay wasn't given time to linger on it.

"Are we going to talk about this?"

"Talk about what?"

"Don't give me that. In case I haven't made myself perfectly clear, I am _on your side_, Clay."

"Yeah, yeah..."

"What do you want from me?" Desmond demanded with quiet anger. "You want to run away again, to swim for shore and hope for the best? I'll do it. Ask me to and I'll do it, but if all you've got is snide remarks then..."

"I know, I know, alright! I'll shut up." By which he meant, _you shut up_. Because Desmond was right, they had no choice but to trust Bill Miles, and that was infuriating in a way that bubbled under Clay's skin, festering where it could find no escape and poisoning everything that it touched.

Desmond had already turned away and was drying himself off briskly, swiping the moisture from his skin then scrubbing the towel vigorously over his head. When he took it away his hair was spiky and stuck out in all directions, and the sight of it softened Clay's heart a little. Desmond looked up and caught his expression.

"What?" he demanded, hiding a smile and feigning continued anger. "Do I look funny to you?"

"Not funny. 'Punk', maybe."

Desmond flicked the towel at him and then stalked over, his facial features softening and then hardening again into a very different expression, one that made his intentions clear. He was only a foot away when Clay growled, sudden hunger flaring alarmingly in his loins, and grabbed Desmond by the back of his neck, pulling him into a hard, crushing kiss.

Desmond's skin was soft and still very warm from the shower, and the feel of it flooded Clay's senses as he gripped handful of Desmond's hair with one hand to keep him in place, dragged the other hand down his back and then grabbed his ass to force them closer together, pulling Desmond's erection flush against Clay's own hip. Desmond had grabbed Clay's biceps to steady himself when he'd been seized, and was kissing back with a kind of dazed, desperate excitement

The fingers digging into him were good, but not enough. Clay wanted Desmond to break through his skin, to burrow into him and tear out all the bits that hurt, and when he opened his eyes he saw a glow light up the tanned skin of Desmond's face, and for one stupid moment reflected on how nice it looked until...

_Oh fuck. No._

Gripped with sudden panic, Clay forced himself to keep the kiss up as he crammed the energy of the Piece of Eden back into its proper place, driven on by the terror of Desmond discovering his secret. He inevitably slipped out of the moment and Desmond felt it, opening his eyes a split second after the glowing lines withdrew from the surface of Clay's skin.

"Something wrong?" he asked, lips brushing against Clay's as they formed the words.

Forcing a smile, Clay said, "No, nothing. Just think we should move this somewhere more appropriate."

He was clearly not totally convinced, but after a moment of hesitation Desmond complied. "OK. Did we get our cabin?"

"Left out the door, it's number 14B." Clay kept up the stiff grin that probably looked horrible, but was an admirable feat considering the thousand fiery scarab beetles that were currently trying to crawl out through his pores. "Go, go, I'll be there in two minutes."

He all but shoved Desmond out the door without waiting for a response, then slammed it behind him and glanced around, agonised and sweating from the pressure building inside him. Damnit, there were no razors in here, but his time at Abstergo had taught Clay to get creative.

The bathroom was so small that the sink and the toilet were wedged right up close to each other, with a small gap between the basin and the cistern. Briskly and methodically, Clay slid his wrist into the gap and then pushed until he was wedged in there up to about halfway up his forearm. Feeling every second like it was an hour of torture, Clay took a deep breath and then jumped, lifting his feet and applying the weight of his body like a lever.

The arm broke: first the radius, then the ulna, splintering up through his skin in two different places, blooding oozing out from around the startling white shards of bone. Clay swallowed a scream and released it as a grunt, yanking his arm out of the makeshift clamp and clutching it to his chest as pain blew through him in a spike of muscular tension and gritted teeth. He lay on the floor, head tipped backwards as his neck muscles arched with the pain, and heard an odd crunching sound as his body healed itself, followed swiftly by the blessed feeling of relief.

This was much better than the razor. So much more damage to repair, so much more power expended by the Piece of Eden. He'd be alright for days now, maybe even for the entire week.

Precisely one and half minutes later, Clay opened the door to their cabin and saw Desmond sitting on the bed in a vest and boxers, hands on his knees, looking nervous, and Clay nearly fell over as he was hit afresh by just how much he was in love with this man. He'd been feeling so vitriolic and bitter and resentful and _pent up_ for so long that he'd forgotten what it was like to be at peace like this.

"Hey," he said, walking over the bed, surprised at how his own voice sounded.

Desmond looked up at him as he approached, smiled beatifically, and held out a hand. The hand already contained something. "Look," he said. "I have acquired rubbers."

"You absolute beauty."

"Lube too. We are set up for the next six days, my friend."

"Guess that's why they call it a pleasure cruise."

Clay sat down on the bed next to Desmond and leaned in to brush his nose over those sharp cheekbones, gently kissing Desmond's jaw and then earlobe as Desmond held his head just slightly inclined towards Clay, eyes closed. Clay slid his hand onto Desmond's hip next, coaxing the overlap of material between his vest and boxers before finding the divide and moving his hand up to the planes of Desmond's stomach. He felt the muscles underneath hitch, but Desmond didn't move just yet. He merely allowed Clay to touch him, totally focused on the sensations of it.

After a few minutes they'd divested themselves of their clothes and were lying on the bed, Desmond lying on top of Clay with both their bodies keyed together in all the right places, moving rhythmically and speeding up until Clay knew that they needed to get to the next stage or it would all end right there. Reaching out blindly with one hand he patted the nightstand until his fingers hit a square foil package. Desmond lifted himself up a little on his hands, giving Clay space to tear the packet open with his teeth, fumble the contents out of it, and then reach down between then. He watched Desmond's face carefully, noting the precise moment at which surprise bloomed in the midst of his lust.

Desmond looked down the narrow gap between their abdomens, and then back up at Clay with a mischievous grin. "You just put a condom on me," he observed, almost accusingly.

Clay smiled, put his lips against Desmond's, and whispered, "Fuck me."

They'd done it this way before, of course. During their time in the Atlanta Den they'd done just about everything that Clay had heard of and was up for, but somehow he'd ended up on top most of the time. Perhaps it was because being penetrated was still very novel to Desmond, or perhaps it was just because they were happy with the configuration. But right now he knew what he wanted, and he wanted Desmond inside him.

"Yes," Desmond said breathlessly. "God, yes."

Clay gripped the other man's thighs tightly between his knees and carefully rolled them both over, sitting up once he was astride Desmond and reaching back to prep himself.

"Can I do that?" Desmond asked, wide-eyed.

Clay tossed the bottle onto the bed and arched an eyebrow. "I don't know, can you?"

The first breach was breathtaking, and Clay gasped as pleasure spiked sharply through him and grabbed Desmond's arm, partially just so he'd have something to hold onto and partially to help control the movement a little. Desmond proceeded cautiously, his pupils huge and eyelids relaxed as he flicked his gaze between Clay's face and the place where his fingers were moving slowly in, waiting for the moment when they were both ready.

It didn't take long. Clay sank down onto Desmond and began to ride him slowly, then faster, losing himself completely in it, leaning over Desmond with one arm outstretched and shoving his fist into the wall for extra leverage, the flashes of stimulation against his prostate firing through his entire body. When he did this, Desmond grabbed his head with a soft, keening moan and pulled him down for a kiss, thrusting upwards sharply, using his spare hand to press Clay down onto him.

Eventually he buried his head against Clay's shoulder and groaned through gritted teeth as his hips stuttered. "Fuck, I'm close, I'm really fucking close..."

"What do you need?" Clay demanded quickly, the gentle roll of the ship naturally keeping the rhythm that Desmond had lost. "Tell me what you need."

"Turn over, let me get on top, let me fuck you."

They moved at the same time and completed the switch in position smoothly. Desmond immediately pushed one of Clay's knees up to his chest, pulled out until he was just barely inside and began to rock the head of his cock into the tightest band of muscle, grunting tiny puffs of air, his eyes closed in fierce concentration until suddenly his mouth opened very wide and...

"Oh my God! Oh Jesus, I'm there! I'm there, Clay, I'm fucking _coming_!" He started to ejaculate, shaking all over, pushing in a little deeper and pressing his fingernails hard into Clay's leg, his skin gleaming with the sweat of exertion. Half-mad with excitation at this dazzling sight, Clay wished that he could join Desmond in the ecstasy, but though he was desperately hard he would need more friction to actually get off.

Most people considered an orgasm to be nothing more than a tipping-point between the act of the sex and the end of it: a single point in time, if a very pleasurable one. For Desmond it was more than that: he seemed to enter into a state of pure ecstasy, so lost in it that you could probably set off a hand grenade right next to him without alerting him, and it just went on and on, shifting into different stages until finally he sank down, utterly spent, sliding out of Clay and using his chest for a pillow.

Clay gently turned Desmond onto his back, lifted himself up on one elbow and dropped a hand down to stroke himself urgently, utterly lost in the need to climax and knowing that Desmond would be too weak to contribute anything for the next five minutes or so.

"Can I come on you?" Clay asked urgently, his hand moving quickly between his legs, keeping himself always half a second away. He waited for Desmond to nod and smile wearily and then tightened his grip a fraction and_ there_, right_ there_...

He might have sobbed a little as he spilled onto Desmond's stomach, filling the cup of his navel and coating the coarse hair just below it, shivers running up and down his spine as every muscle in his body uncoiled.

After a very lazy, half-hearted clean-up job they side-by-side, hand-in-hand, looking up at nothing in particular and listening to tiny waves slapping against the side of the ship.

"We could be in Asturias a while. The Assassins have a lot to rebuild, and we need to stay as far out of Templar reach as possible." Desmond paused to consider this. "How do you feel about living there? Indefinitely."

"Hell, I always wanted to go to Spain," Clay replied, in too good a mood to grouse any more. "At least the weather would be nice."

"Yeah." Clay saw Desmond grin in his peripheral vision. "We could change our names to José and Rodrigo, get married, maybe go and live in Oviedo, work in the bars out there. I could impress the locals with my knowledge of New York cocktails..."

He continued to ramble on, obviously oblivious to what he had just said, but Clay's heart was thudding in his chest and there was something fizzing through his bones that felt a little like trepidation and a lot like excitement. He licked his lips to try and get some moisture into them, and waited for Desmond to stop speaking.

Eventually the plans stopped coming forth, and Clay decided it was time to ask. "You'd do that?"

"Well not exactly that, but once we learn the language I..."

"You'd marry me?"

"Sure, it's legal over there."

They both turned their heads at the same time, grinning at the synchronicity, and the smile lingered on Clay's face. "You'd seriously marry me?"

Desmond made a shrugging motion that was difficult to pull off whilst lying down. "Why not?" he asked blithely.

Why not indeed. Marriage was something that Clay had written off years ago; he'd realised that he was gay long before same-sex marriage was legalised in any US states, and come to terms with the fact that his love life would always be something deviant and unrecognised by government or church. When it had first started becoming a legitimate option he had been 24, and in a stage of life where commitment to another person was the last thing on his mind. Then he had joined up with the Assassins, and that had pretty much eclipsed everything until Desmond had come along.

The man in question was starting to look a bit insecure. "I mean, we don't _have_ to if you don't want to, I was just..."

"Of course I'd want to, don't be an idiot."

"Fine."

"Good."

They both looked back up at the ceiling, lost in their own thoughts.

"Fuck," Desmond exclaimed after a few minutes. "Did we just get engaged?"

Clay had been wondering the same thing, and was still thinking it over. To put Desmond's mind at ease he replied, "Nah, probably not." He hesitated for another half-second before saying. "OK, maybe we did."

"Wow." Desmond mulled this over. "That was the worst fucking proposal ever. I feel like I should apologise."

"Yeah, you're definitely husband material."

"Fuck you. We should probably focus on staying alive before we start picking out tuxes and setting dates, agreed?"

"Staying alive seems like a good plan." Clay nudged Desmond's shoulder to roll him onto his side, then pressed up close to his back and wrapped an arm around him, the arm which had been broken an hour earlier. He tried to identify the alien emotion that was filling all the empty places inside of him, wondering if the Piece of Eden was flaring up again, until he finally realised that it was ineffable happiness. He grinned and pulled Desmond a little closer before sleep took both of them.


	15. Chapter 15

**Introductory note:** _This chapter was originally going to contain all three conversations, but once I finished writing the first I realised that A) that would make the chapter ridiculously long and B) you wouldn't get to see it for at least a week. So here is the first of three conversations on the Good Ship Assassin._

* * *

Over the course of the week at sea, three conversations took place.

Of course, that's not entirely true. A ship full of Assassins and no TV meant that a great number of conversations took place, and even Clay and Desmond alone managed to get a lot of talking done, when they weren't occupied with other activities. But for Clay, there were three conversations that stood out, and for one of them he wasn't even officially present.

The first one was on Tuesday.

* * *

**Tuesday**

They woke up late and ate breakfast late, pilfering through the kitchen cupboards until they found a box of sugary cereal mixed incongruously in with the muesli and granary bread. Desmond, who hadn't eaten sugary cereal for well over a year, treated it like it was a $200 meal in the finest of restaurants, closing his eyes and humming appreciatively with each spoonful. Clay, who had finished eating and was now leaning back in his chair with his arms folded, grinned a little at the performance. Because of the hours they kept, they had the dining room to themselves, and had broken out the silver cutlery and china in defiance of the Assassins' humble lifestyle.**  
**

Pointing his spoon at the bowl, Desmond said very seriously, "Look, the cereal turned the milk this grey-purple colour. That's how you know it's the good stuff."

Clay quirked an eyebrow. He had broken one of his fingers that morning and was feeling calm and collected. "I didn't realise I was sharing a table with such a connoisseur. Care to impart any more wisdom?"

"Yeah." Desmond put his spoon down and swiped his tongue primly over his lips to remove the traces of milk. "Move a little closer."

Clay glanced pointedly at their surroundings. "You think that's wise."

"I don't really care." His hand slipped onto Clay's thigh and squeezed a little. Mesmerised, Clay unfolded his arms and leaned in. Desmond's mouth tasted sweet from the cereal, his chin smooth from where he had shaved that morning and his breath hot as it passed over Clay's lips. Suddenly he felt as though the reservoir of air in his lungs had shrunk down to the size of a pea, and there was a very real and irrational desire to pull Desmond closer, onto the floor perhaps. In an attempt to keep things PG, Clay settled for reaching up to stroke Desmond's cheek, his coarse dark hair, to pull at the curve of his skull. He took hold of Desmond's lower lip very gently between his teeth and ... heard the dining room door open.

Clay very carefully looked over, keeping his hand in Desmond's hair so that he would not pull away, and when he turned his head he felt Desmond's lips brush over his cheekbone. Then he saw who was in the doorway and pulled away sharply.

"Oh fuck," he heard Desmond say, and silently echoed the sentiment, staring up at the ceiling. He planned to look just about everywhere except into the face of Bill Miles.

"Sorry to interrupt," he heard, and Clay gritted his teeth, unable to keep silent.

"Well, it is your forté," he riposted.

Bill carefully ignored that. "I was hoping to have a word with my son."

Clay glanced over at Desmond and was pleased to find him looking decidedly unenthusiastic about this proposal. "Are you asking my permission?" he asked, turning back to Bill. "I don't know, Des, should I let you out to play?"

"Give it a rest," Desmond muttered in his ear. Louder, he said, "What do you want, Dad?"

Bill didn't look at him just yet. "It's a rather personal subject."

"Oh I don't mind. If I get too disturbed I'll just go to my happy place," Clay replied.

He was rather hoping that Bill would push the issue, but instead the man merely shrugged, walked over, and sat down opposite Desmond at the table. It seemed that they were back here once again: William Miles, Desmond Miles, and Clay Kaczmarek: trapped in what felt like an awkward love triangle. Clay wasn't in any way attracted to Desmond's father, and had never been; even back when Bill was a lot younger and Clay a lot more naive, he'd never considered the man to be anything more than a mentor. But he couldn't crush the resentment he felt that Desmond now seemed to consider himself obligated towards this man, this silver-haired, silver-tongued liar: a general who didn't hesitate to send lambs to the slaughter if there was something to be gained from it in this pointless war. As one of the aforesaid lambs, Clay was probably biased, but he felt that the sacrifice was too great.

It stuck in his craw, that was the beginning and end of it. At times he wondered if Harold Kaczmarek hadn't been uncharacteristically canny when he'd named his son after one of the building materials that he was so familiar with. Clay - a soft, malleable substance, which turned hard and brittle when exposed to flame. Hadn't that been his own personal journey? The wide-eyed young recruit ready to do just about anything to earn the approval of the great William Miles, the only father figure who had ever believed in him and encouraged his aspirations, who had then been turned over to the Templars and tortured until he was left a scorched and deformed subspecies of what he had once been. Full of cracks.

Clay wondered if he could get away with breaking another finger, right here, just to take the edge off his tension.

"Now, I don't want you to overthink this..." Bill began.

"Uh-oh." Desmond tried to sound light-hearted, but Clay glanced down and saw him holding onto the side of his chair very hard.

"It's more a precaution than anything else," Bill continued, a slightly forced smile on his face. "I understand that you feel I've put you under a lot of ... pressure, and I am sorry for that. But I've also seen you rise up to those challenges when you were needed, even when the entire world rested on your shoulders, and you bested them. Words can't express just how proud I am to call you my son."

Ah, the flattery.

_We've been watching you and we thought that the time was ripe to approach. You're the best in your class, you must know that, and we want to invite you to join our organisation..._

_I don't think I've ever seen anything like that, Clay. I feel we need to step up your involvement with some of our bigger projects..._

_You are a vital part of this team, Clay..._

_Good work, Clay..._

_I'm proud of you, Clay..._

Bill fuckin' Miles. He knew his game and he played it well. Now that he had Desmond all warmed up, he'd go in with the demands, and make them sound like favours.

"All the same, we've put you through enough, and I care about you too much to see you continue to struggle under this burden. Now, at the moment you're the only Assassin that I know of with the right genes to properly use the Pieces of Eden."

_Wrong_, Clay thought immediately, before he realised that Bill simply no longer counted him as an Assassin.

"Even I can't use the Apple, and believe me when I say that I've tried. Between your mother's genes and my own, however, _you_ have enough DNA distilled from the First Civilisation to use their technology."

"You knew this from when I was a kid, or at least suspected it, right?" Desmond said slowly, processing the information. "Why didn't you and Mom have any other kids? You know, backups." He failed, or perhaps didn't try at all, to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

Bill looked at him seriously. "We did try, Desmond. You're right about me. I love you, you are my son, but I also understood that we needed every possible advantage over the Templars in order to win this war. Your mother and I did try to conceive more children, to create more Assassins capable of using the Pieces of Eden. But..." he sighed. "Yours was a difficult birth. I never told you this, but your mother barely survived it, and she never recovered completely. Oh, she's healthy enough," he added quickly, as Desmond's face crumpled a little. "But she can't have any more children."

Guilt, another powerful tool in Bill's arsenal. Clay knew that Desmond regretted the hurt he had caused his mother when he ran away. Emphasising the fact that he was the only child she'd had - and ever would have - just drove it in a little deeper.

While Desmond was absorbing this information, his face tight with sadness, Bill pressed on. "It's unfair that all the pressure lies with you, and as a leader I know that it makes no sense for us to have all our eggs in one basket." _Bam_, sentiment. _Bam_, reasoning. This was like watching a piano concerto played by Mozart himself. Bill hesitated for just a second before the big climax. "I'd like you to give us a sample of DNA."

Desmond looked up slowly, looking his father in the eye as if unsure what he had just heard. "A what?"

"A sperm sample," Bill stated baldly.

Clay realised his mouth was open. Even he hadn't seen that coming.

"_Why_?" Desmond asked, sounding utterly bewildered. Before Bill could reply, Desmond continued, working it out even as he spoke. "You want to make sure my DNA survives, in case I'm killed, or I run away again." He gave his father a long, slow stare. "So what would you do with this ... sample? Freeze it? Divide it into five pieces and spread them across the globe?" He laughed, but didn't sound very amused.

Bill paused for a moment before continuing very carefully. "We would freeze it, at first, for transportation. But we'd want to create a contingency as soon as possible. We've found a candidate, a girl at our base in China, who has a high percentage of First Civilization chromosomes in her DNA..."

"So you'd knock up some chick with my ... using my sperm. When you say 'contingency', you're talking about a kid. You want me to become a father?"

"I would take full responsibility," Bill pushed on, speaking quickly, leaning forward and taking one of Desmond's hands in his own. "I'm not asking you to be a father, Desmond, I know that you're not ready for that..."

"You mean you don't think he'll ever be ready for that," Clay snapped, suddenly unable to keep out of this any more. "Because I turned your son into a fucking queer and now he's not going to have kids."

"Clay, this has _nothing_ to do with you," Bill said, a little sharply.

"No, he's right! You don't want to wait around for me to grow up and start reproducing, so you want to take a shortcut. Cut your losses with me and start fresh with a new grandkid who'll do as he's told. Jesus _Christ_. I cannot fucking believe I'm hearing this." Desmond was yelling now, his fists tight and eyes wide.

"I'm asking this because I love you," Bill burst out, obviously deciding he needed the L word to turn this conversation back in his favour. "You're my son and I love you, Desmond, and I would never 'cut my losses' with you." He even had the gall to sound hurt, obviously trying to squeeze a bit more guilt out of Desmond. "I want you to be able to live a normal life, but right now you're too important to us for me to allow that. All you have to do is give us a sample, and I promise you that you will never have to hear about this plan again, or be involved with it..."

"And you think I'd want that?" For once, it seemed, Bill had catastrophically misread his audience. Desmond looked outraged and deeply offended. "You think I could just send off a ... a sample, knowing that somewhere in China it would be used to conceive my first child, and I'd be happy to just leave him in your hands, to be raised as an Assassin and never know his real father? You think I'd want that for my kid? Christ, Dad, I know you think I have a phobia about responsibility, but I never realised you thought that fucking little of me..."

"Desmond..."

"I ran away when I was sixteen because I wanted to choose my own life, and I knew that I had that right. Deep down, I knew that. It wasn't because I was a coward, and it wasn't because I was scared of responsibility. Maybe I'm not ready to become a father yet, but when I do it won't be because the world needs my bloodline to continue, and I'm not going to force my kids into a life that they might not even want."

Privately, Clay thought that, with that statement, Desmond had already proven himself to be about as ready for fatherhood as he would ever be. Certainly more ready than Bill Miles or Harold Kaczmarek had ever been.

Bill was glaring at his son, unable to hide the anger now. "That was a very noble statement, Desmond, but it doesn't change how utterly selfish you're being. Perhaps you'll feel differently when the entire world is held in the Templar's grip and it's too late to stop it."

"Perhaps I will. Now get the fuck out."

"I will not! In case you've forgotten, this is _my_ ship."

"Then we'll leave. Come on, Clay."

Desmond stood up abruptly and Clay did the same, not bothering to disguise the grin on his face. Desmond marched over to the door and Clay followed, turning at the last minute to wink at Bill and flip the bird at him.

When he rounded the corner and they continued down the corridor, however, he looked over and realised that Desmond was crying, completely silently, and suddenly Clay didn't feel so good any more.


	16. Chapter 16

**Wednesday **

He found him above deck, near the front of the ship, leaning forward onto the railings and looking out at the sea. The combination of fierce wind and blazing sunshine had rendered outside conditions uncomfortable enough that they were alone out here, and between the sounds of the sea and breeze Desmond didn't hear him approaching until he was about a foot away. Desmond turned and nodded, but didn't try to force a smile onto his face. Instead he pointed at a faint strip of green on the northern horizon.

"Check it out," he said.

Clay squinted. "What is that?"

"I think it's Crete."

"It doesn't look too far. Feel like jumping ship now and going for some Ouzo?"

Desmond did grin a little at that, standing a little straighter and bracing his hands on the railing. Clay watched him and felt a growing frustration as he saw the trouble still evident on his friend's brow.

"I take it you're still brooding about what happened yesterday." Clay challenged, folding his arms and leaning forward so that they rested on the railing as well, just along from Desmond's curled hands. "Forget it, he's an asshole."

He looked over in time to see Desmond's duck his head and close his eyes. "God, I wish I could believe he doesn't care about me at all. That would make this easier. But I feel like he does love me and he has the most fucked up ways of showing it."

"Why do you still care?" Clay demanded, genuinely bewildered. "He's forfeited the right to call you his son. I'm not kidding, we should really just abandon him now, leave him alone with his precious little creed."

"Where would we go?" Desmond sighed. "We're wanted men, who's going to protect us if the Assassins don't?"

Clay took a deep breath and readied his proposal, the one that he had been thinking over since last night, forging it in the fires of his indignation and resentment. It had come to him in a kind of brainwave and his first thought was to wonder why they had never done it before. It made so much sense. "We can protect ourselves," he said simply. "If we play this right, no one will_ dare_ come after us."

Desmond furrowed his brow. "What are you talking about?"

It wasn't like anyone was going to hear them all the way out here, but Clay leaned in closer anyway. "Your father is here on this ship. What else is here with him?"

"Are you talking about the Apple?"

He was. The Assassins had learned the location of one of the Apples of Eden whilst Desmond was inside the Animus. Clay had been present for the session, having picked up on the excited buzz running through the Atlanta Den and realised that they were nearing a big discovery. He'd watched on the monitors as Desmond relived one of the later memories of Ezio, returning to the library at Masyaf and finding Altaïr's original Apple hidden inside, ultimately deciding to leave it there for his descendant to find. Bill had immediately sent word to the team at Masyaf, giving them instructions as to how to open the library. The Apple had been recovered and since then, to Clay's knowledge, it had not left Bill Miles' side.

"Yeah," Clay said with a cunning grin. "I'm talking about the Apple."

Desmond was staring at him disbelievingly. "You think we should steal the Apple?"

Clay stood up straight and slapped a hand onto the railing. "Who said anything about stealing? Your father can't use it, he told you himself, which means that he was never meant to use it. I watched that memory, Desmond! Ezio actually fucking _named_ you as the person he wanted to leave it to. That Apple belongs to you, Desmond, it's your goddamn inheritance! Handed down from Altaïr to Ezio and from Ezio to you." He grabbed Desmond by the shoulders excitedly, making it easier to look him in the eye. "Think about it! How many people in the world are actually capable of using that technology."

"About ... I think Dad said it's 1 in 10 million."

"Exactly. Just 700 people on the entire planet, and two of them are standing right here on the deck of this ship. I've already got one Piece, and there's another one onboard that was explicitly gifted to you by your ancestor. Why don't you have it? Why isn't it in your hands?"

"Dad..."

"Because your father doesn't want you to have any power of your own! He wants to keep you dependent on him because he knows that's the only reason you're sticking around!"

"That's not true," Desmond insisted, but didn't elaborate on which part of the statement was untrue. He looked like he was getting ready to go on the defensive, and Clay didn't want that. He wasn't attacking Desmond, he was just trying to open his eyes, to make him see his own potential. Clay slid his hands upwards from Desmond's shoulders and into his hair, moving in closer so that their torsos were almost touching, then briefly resting his own forehead against Desmond's as though trying to physically push some sense into him.

"Just think about this, just for a second," he continued, speaking slowly despite how fired-up he was feeling. "The last few years of your life have been spent on the run, in hiding, incarcerated, tortured, chased, recaptured, in this endless cycle. It's been the same for me, and it's ridiculous. We're carrying the heritage of the First Civilization in our very DNA. We have the potential for so much power, and instead we find ourselves scraping and scurrying and constantly afraid. It's fucking _obscene_." Clay was still managing to keep his tone even, but he could feel himself threatening to lose control, and took a very slow breath. Desmond looked somewhat unnerved, but Clay thought (perhaps it was just wishful thinking) that he detected a certain intrigue as well.

"Yeah," Desmond said at last. "I'm not going to lie, the last few years haven't been fun. But that doesn't mean I'm going to resort to using the Apple. You've seen what it does to people ... what it did to Al Mualim, and Savonarola, and Abbas..."

"I also heard Leonardo da Vinci say that the Apple drove weaker minds insane. Weaker minds, meaning people without First Civilisation DNA. It wouldn't be like that for us. Look at me, I've had this thing in my arm for over a week and I feel fine. Better than fine, I'm_ invincible_, Desmond." It was the smallest of white lies, and Clay delivered it perfectly. After all, he was _fine_; the price for keeping the Piece of Eden was miniscule in comparison to what it offered.

Desmond seemed to stick on this point however. "I've been meaning to ask you about that," he said gently, looking into Clay's face like he was expecting to find new stress lines there. "Are you sure you're feeling OK? No side effects or anything?"

"None," Clay said, completely straight-faced. "I feel completely normal. Just a little more bulletproof." Convinced that Desmond was coming around, he pressed on quickly. "Just think about it. You pick up that Apple and you'll never have to run again. You could make Warren Vidic himself get down on his knees and worship you as a god."

"I don't want that." Desmond shook his head, his face screwed up in frustration. "I don't want anyone to worship me. I don't deserve that kind of power any more than Al Mualim did. I think the best course of action would be to throw that fucking thing in the ocean and have done with it."

"Don't go on a massive power trip, then. You could make every Templar and Assassin on Earth forget you even existed. Live a normal life and keep the Apple out of the wrong hands." Clay stroked the hair at Desmond's temple, feeling the small white scar from where he had fractured his skull two years ago, remembering the horror of that day and the awful sight of Desmond lying in a twisted, battered, bloody heap. "I can offer us protection. You could give us peace."

Desmond looked almost broken for a moment, as though daring to think about a simple future was physically painful to him. Then Clay saw him forcibly draw a barrier back up around himself and shake his head. "It wouldn't work. It's never going to be that simple for us, Clay."

"It could be." Clay pulled Desmond close and then leaned his will upon the Piece of Eden, spreading its cloak of protection over both of them with a sensation similar to stretching the tightness out of his muscles after a long sleep. Desmond gasped aloud, and it took Clay a second to realise that he could actually feel its influence this time. He half-expected Desmond to comment on it, to ask why Clay's control was so much stronger now, but the only response was Desmond's hand sliding over his shoulderblades and the tickle of that dark hair against Clay's cheek.

They stayed like that for a while, until finally Desmond pushed Clay away and suggested that they go and get something to eat. He didn't bring the plan up again, either to dismiss or accept it, but Clay knew it would be on his mind for the rest of their journey. That was enough.


	17. Chapter 17

**Saturday**

Clay wasn't sure how he had found himself here, but here he was. A younger Assassin hurried past him with a bundle of dirty laundry and gave him a rather odd look, turning away quickly when Clay glared up at him. Distracting. He needed to listen to this. He stretched his legs out across the hall so that anyone else who began to approach would hopefully be deterred and turn around again.

The door was slightly ajar and Clay was seated against the wall, his right ear a scant few inches from the crack through which the conversation was seeping. Vaguely, in the unimportant part of his brain, he wondered if it was immoral to eavesdrop on the man he was in love with, but the rest of him crushed the thought with the obvious fact of how necessary this all was. There existed a threat to Clay-and-Desmond, in the form of William Miles, and this was something that he needed to keep a close eye on. For Desmond's sake, yes, because Clay had observed the tension between Desmond and Bill dissipating over the past few days, and that was extremely unsettling. Tuesday's fumble should have been enough to kill off any sense of familial duty. But here they were, cosied up together in the communications centre.

"... We should be in Spain by this time tomorrow. Have the others briefed you on the plan?"

"We drop anchor two miles off shore and row the rest of the way in the boats as soon as it gets dark."

"Good. I have papers here for you and Clay. We'll hike a few miles to our transportation and then drive to the Den in Saragossa."

"Got it."

There was a shuffling sound, the crinkle as Desmond looked through the documents he had just been handed. "What happens when we get to Saragossa?" he asked softly.

"I would ask that you stay at the Den, for your own safety. You know the position we're in right now, and how powerful the Templars are. You won't be held prisoner, if that's what you're asking. Twice now I've had to chase after you as though you were some kind of escaped convict, and I refuse to do it again."

"You won't have to. We'll stay."

"You believe that Clay will agree to that?" The question was cautious.

"If I stay, he'll stay."

"And if he leaves? Will you go with him."

"Look, Dad, just ... let me deal with Clay, OK?"

A flash of white in the corner of his eye briefly lifted Clay out his fog. He glanced sharply at the Assassin who had been approaching with a handful of papers, clearly headed for the room that the Mileses were currently occupying. Clay shook his head, very slowly, and the Assassin suddenly seemed to remember a task that needed doing in the opposite direction. Clay leaned his head back against the wall gently, careful not to make any sound.

"... Never really talked about him," Bill was saying, introducing it casually, like a point of trivia.

"What's there to talk about?" Desmond replied tightly. "You hate him, he hates you. I can't just be a sounding-post every time you two want to tear each other down."

His voice rose harshly at the end, and Bill seemed to give the air time to clear a little before he continued. "I don't hate Clay," he stated temperately. "I never have."

"He seems to think differently."

"That's because you're right about one thing: Clay does hate me. I don't expect he will ever forgive me for what I put him through, nor should he."

Clay had stolen a stiletto blade from the armoury and upon hearing Bill say that he slid it surgically into the palm of his left hand, shoving and wiggling through the bone and muscle until the skin on the back of the hand tented and then broke, pierced through. Feeling the power bubble up through him he quickly whisked the blade out, cupping his right hand under the wound to catch the drops of blood that fell out before the golden rays surged through him and he was healed, whole again, stronger than before. He released a shuddering breath very slowly and carefully, so that it would not be heard in the silence that had followed Bill's words.

Finally Desmond asked, "What was he like? Before Abstergo, I mean, when you first met him."

Bill seemed to consider the question for a moment. "Bright. Very bright, that was my first impression. It was a pleasant surprise. We'd had a lengthy operation during which we constructed an enormously complex family tree of every Assassin who had been known to effectively wield a Piece of Eden, trying to trace their descendants. Before I met him, I knew that Clay had a great deal of Assassin blood in him, but his family had been lapsed from the Brotherhood for several generations. So when I finally approached him, and discovered his intelligence and his aptitude for technology, I was delighted. It was more than I could have hoped..."

"I didn't ask you if he was smart," Desmond interrupted suddenly. "I _know_ that he was smart, he still is. Much smarter than me."

"You're right, I'm avoiding the question. Clay was ... very passionate. I got the impression that he'd never been able to indulge his interests, or been encouraged to pursue them, so when I set him down with a group of like-minded people, he flourished. He was a little shy, at first, but as soon as I gave him a project he'd forget to be self-conscious and he could talk to an audience for hours. Nearly took out my eye once when he got a bit over-enthusiastic with his gesturing." Bill could be heard smiling at the memory. "He got on well with the other Assassins. Everyone liked him. I ... had my reservations, but I always do. Liking people too much tends to skew your judgement of them, so I maintained my distance. I was ultimately training him to become a killer, after all."

A meditative silence followed as Clay clenched his fists, suddenly finding himself needing another release ridiculously soon.

"Tell me more," Desmond prompted.

"Perhaps it was because I'd told him about his heritage, but he was fascinated by the history of the Assassins and Templars, just couldn't get enough of it. He was a lot like..." Bill hesitated, obviously regretting having started the sentence.

"It's alright. It's Shaun, isn't it? When Shaun came along he reminded you of Clay."

"Yes. It's a shame we didn't recruit Shaun until Clay was already in place at Abstergo - I wish they could have known each other back then. Though of course they did meet eventually."

"Clay pointed a gun at Shaun's head."

Bill laughed. That sort of thing was funny if you'd lived a long time as an Assassin. "Not an immediate bond of friendship, then? Pity." When Desmond failed to respond, Bill went on, his tone one of very careful tact now. "It can't have been easy for you..."

"I'm fine. Honestly, the amount of time I spent in the Animus, I got used to seeing people die."

"They weren't people you knew, though. They weren't friends. It's a very different experience when you see it in real life. If you need to..."

"God, no, _no_. I _don't_ need to talk about it. Shaun tried to save me and he got shot and I saw it happen and that's all there is. I've had my fill of reliving bad memories, and that ... No." Clay could tell just from listening that Desmond had started breathing through his nose, lips pressed together like they always were when he was trying to bring himself back under control.

"It wasn't your fault, Desmond..."

"We are done talking about this. Don't bring it up again." There was a rustling, as though Desmond was looking through the papers again, probably to avoid looking at his father. At last he said, "You know that thing you asked me earlier? About how ... If Clay left, would I go with him?"

"Yes, I remember."

"I would. I'd probably bitch and moan at him for being an idiot, but I'd go. No matter what."

"I see."

Clay sensed that the conversation was coming to an end and didn't want to be caught if Desmond left the room quickly, especially since he had already heard the only words that mattered. Very slowly he moved from his leaning position into a crouch and then stood up silently. He measured the weight of his steps over the whole of his foot so that he made virtually no sound as he walked down the hall. Clay had work to do before tomorrow.


	18. Chapter 18

**Introductory note:**_ I was a little concerned, with the imminent release of ACIII, that I'd been playing Desmond and William's relationship as too strained and hostile throughout these fics. What if it turned out that Bill's actually a lovely, caring father and he and Desmond immediately reconciled all their past differences?_

_Then I found a video of the first 20 minutes of gameplay and NOPE, they're as dysfunctional as I could ever have hoped._

_Also thought up a point of trivia which I forgot to mention in the intro notes for Thirty-Three/Mad To Live. The appearance of Clay 2.0/dark-haired Clay was based on the real life looks of Clay's voice actor (for Revelations). I saw him in a web series where he had REALLY messy hair, which made me laugh, so I put it in the story._

* * *

Clay feigned sleep, but didn't allow himself to go under. He couldn't exactly set an alarm to wake himself up before Desmond, so his only other option was to stay alert until the early hours, when he could begin putting the plan into effect. Desmond was next to him, lying on his back, his head turned slightly away from Clay on the pillow. He had kicked off the sheets in his sleep (one of Desmond's faults was that he was a bit of a kicker; Clay's dog Hank used to do something similar, twitching his legs whilst asleep as he dreamed of running) and left his torso bare, enough that Clay could see where he'd filled out a little over the past week, his ribs not protruding quite so worryingly any more.

Then Desmond released an odd, incomprehensible mumble, then rolled over and, still asleep, slid his hand onto Clay's chest, right over his heart.

The hand rose as Clay gasped, a sharp intake of breath, and immediately closed his eyes and clenched his teeth to prevent himself from making any more noise. He suddenly felt tears pricking underneath his eyelids and had no idea why, except perhaps that the emotions he was feeling towards Desmond at that tiny gesture were incompatible with the simmering rage and indignation upon which this entire scheme had been built.

For a moment, Clay began to question whether what he was planning was the right thing to do. Nothing had been carried out yet; if there was a last moment at which to back out with no consequences then this was it. After all, was this existence so bad? The Assassins were offering them protection and liberty, of a sort. Bill hadn't accepted their relationship, but he tolerated it, and Clay had been allowed to keep Desmond and share a room with him and spend time with him within the shelter of the Brotherhood.

They could live out the rest of their lives like this. He only needed to bend his knees a little, offer a truce to Bill Miles, and he could grow old with Desmond. Clay wanted that; he wanted to wake up when he was eighty years old and find Desmond's wrinkled hand resting still over his heart.

His pulse quickened at that thought, and it awoke the anger inside him once more. Ckay thought of all the time that he'd spent imprisoned or on the run. He thought of the year that the Assassins had stolen from him when they'd sent him into Abstergo, and the year he had spent sitting at Desmond's side and not knowing if he would ever wake up, because of those bastards and their schedule, their utter disregard for the dangers of the Bleeding Effect. Bill Miles had demonstrated that he did not give a shit about his son except as a tool to be manipulated by the Assassins, and Clay was seriously considering entrusting their lives to that son of bitch? No. Hell, no.

He and Desmond were better than this. They were fucking _gods_, with unimaginable power right at their fingertips, and it had been kept from them for too long.

Very carefully, Clay lifted Desmond's hand off of his chest and set it down upon the mattress. Desmond grunted a little in his sleep and his right leg twitched, but he did not wake, not even when Clay slid out of the bed and wrote a short note on a scrap of paper. Setting it carefully down on the bedside table, he looked down at Desmond again and considered kissing him, just on the forehead, but decided against it. The last thing he needed right now was for Desmond to wake up too soon.

Ten minutes later he was two decks above, walking down a corridor towards Bill Miles' room was. It was the only logical place for the Piece of Eden to be kept, for Clay couldn't imagine Bill sleeping easily with their most important asset stuffed into a cupboard in the armoury or communications centre. No, Miles would want it kept as close as possible, and this would be his undoing.

The door was unlocked. Clay opened it as slowly and quietly as possible, releasing a cool breath of relief when it opened without so much as a creak. Once inside, he was that Bill's cabin was, surprisingly, smaller than the one that Clay and Desmond shared, with only minimal furnishings. Perhaps Bill didn't like being surrounded by hiding places.

The man himself was asleep on his stomach, head turned sideways on the pillow with his mouth a little open, and it was somewhat unnerving to see him looking this relaxed. Even now, Clay was still so accustomed to thinking of Bill Miles as an authority figure, infallible, that it felt practically perverse to be seeing him in such a vulnerable state. As he watched, one of Bill's legs suddenly kicked a little under the blankets, sending a spike into Clay's heart rate. He watched carefully, but it seemed that Bill was just dreaming of running.

And there, on the cabinet next to Bill's bed, was a drawstring bag with a round, heavy weight inside it.

Keeping his mouth slightly open in order to breathe through it silently, Clay took a step closer to the bed, then another. He reached out with one hand...

That was when the ship hit a particularly robust wave, and rocked sharply. Clay stumbled and caught himself in time to keep from toppling over onto the bed, but unfortunately not quickly enough to prevent the stomp of his booted foot upon the floor. Panicking, he reached out to grab the Apple...

A hand clamped down onto his wrist. Hard.

Bill's eyes were wide and staring up at him, more in bewilderment than anything else. Clay tried to jerk his wrist away, but Bill held on.

"What are you-?" he began.

Unthinking, his whole body ablaze with sudden fury, Clay found his free hand slamming into Bill's face. Once, twice. Blood on the sheets, but impossibly Bill still wasn't letting go of his arm. Clay pulled, then dragged his old mentor until he came off the bed and landed on the floor with a loud thump, crying out sharply at the pain but still not letting go.

Clay put his knee on Bill's chest and then rested all of his weight on that knee, until he could hear the older man's breath starting to become wheezy and strained. With the hand that wasn't being held in a death grip, he made a grab for the Piece of Eden and caught the fabric of the bag between his fingertips, fumbling at the opening, reaching in and _yes_.

If Clay were to describe it, he would say that it felt like being incredibly powerful and utterly weak at the same time; absorbed into something much older and much bigger than himself. He pulled the Apple from the drawstring bag and held it up in front of Bill Miles' wide eyes, both of them watching as the artefact began to glow and gold lines began spreading from Clay's hand and down his arm. When they collided with the point at which the other Piece was buried, Clay suddenly felt a burst of discomfort. There was too much power flooding through him without an outlet right now, but he couldn't quite bring himself to let the Apple go.

"Clay," Bill whispered, his voice thin from lack of oxygen. "Please, Clay, don't."

He sounded almost afraid. Clay looked down at him, leaning into his chest a little more. "I could kill you," he said ponderously. "Right here."

His face purpling, eyes losing focus, Bill didn't respond. Clay felt a burning hate rising up inside of him, and he didn't know whether it was because of the combined powers of the Pieces of Eden, or simply something organic, a part of himself.

"Look at me," he growled, low and dangerous. "I wanted to be a better person than this. I had dreams and goals. I wanted to work for NASA. But I had something that you wanted and so you took it. You _took_ it." He lifted the Apple over Bill, in front of his face, as though it was a stone with which he was going to crack the man's skull open. "Isn't this what you wanted, to see my DNA fulfilling its _potential_?" He spat the last word out, and saw a fleck of saliva land on Bill's face.

Of course, no reply came. Bill was nearing unconsciousness, and this conversation needed to be wrapped up quickly, one way or another.

Clay continued carefully. "But I'm not going to kill you. Because you're Desmond's father, and that seems to mean something to him."

He removed his knee from Bill's chest and watched him drawing in deep gulps of air. The entire room was lit up with the glow of the Apple now, and Clay could see clearly the lines on Bill Miles' face, the grey of his hair, the blood on his skin. He felt a strange emotion running through him that, had it been felt for anyone else, might even have been pity.

Clay drew carefully upon the reservoir of power in his hand and channelled it into his voice. "Get up," he said.

Abruptly, Bill stopped gasping and got onto his knees before standing and looking into Clay's face with a kind of dull fascination. He no longer seemed to be afraid or angry; his expression had slackened into something that Clay had never seen in any member of the Miles family: obedience.

"In a minute you will go back to sleep. You won't remember any of this. Do you understand?"

"I understand," Bill replied in a deadened voice.

"I'm taking the Apple. You won't realise that it's gone. You will forget that you ever had it."

"Yes."

"Desmond and I are leaving. You won't try to follow us."

Bill opened his mouth, and then hesitated. For a moment something flared through the mask of compliance and his eyes glittered a little as he looked at Clay pleadingly.

"Do you understand?" Clay snapped.

Bill suddenly shook his head. "My son. My _son_."

"'My son, my son'," Clay mimicked cruelly. "What about my father, huh? Did you care about_ his_ son? Do you care about any sons but your own? Do you even care about Desmond, or is he just an _asset_ to you?" In his anger, he loosened his mental grip on the floodgates of Ancient power, and watched a flash of pain burst onto Bill's face as the Apple burned brighter.

"You don't have a son," Clay said firmly. "Say it."

"I ... I don't have a son," Bill repeated, his eyes tight shut as he cringed in pain. It was impossible to tell whether it was from the pressure being put on his brain, or the difficulty of uttering the words. Clay didn't care enough to find out which.

"Good. Now sleep."

Bill slumped onto the floor as though his strings had been cut and began breathing deep and easy, as though he'd been asleep for hours. Blood was trickling slowly from the cut on his lip where Clay had hit him, sliding over the curve of his chin and down his jaw.

Calmer now, Clay slowly withdrew his mind from the Apple. He grabbed the drawstring bag from the table and slipped the artefact back into it. It would be his gift to Desmond, eventually. Once they were away from here, of course.

After all, Desmond might need some convincing as well.


	19. Chapter 19

Spain was visible on the horizon now.

Clay stood on the bow of the ship, leaning upon the railing as a light salty rain settled in his hair, the wind brushing it away from his temples as the sun rose behind his back. He held the Apple of Eden in one hand, almost contemplatively, weighing it. It was lighter than it looked, and he wondered if it felt different to different people.

Desmond would be here in an hour. The alarm would wake him and he would see Clay's note, then come to meet him up here. The Assassins wouldn't drop anchor until the afternoon, but by that time Clay and Desmond would already have made it ashore. Perhaps someone would alert William to the fact that his son was missing, but since the man currently had no memory of ever producing a son, he would likely be too confused to launch an immediate search party.

Spain was as good a place as any to make a home. Somewhere in the mountains, perhaps, near a river. Once he'd acquired some money, Clay could fly his parents out here as well and set them up in a nice little retirement home. He could use the Apple to soothe their minds, make them forget about their divorce and live together again. He could help his father to finally be rid of his stress and anger, cure his mother of her anxiety, and be a good son to them. He would tell them about Desmond without fear of being rejected or disowned, and have a family again: the one he had been born with and the one which he had chosen.

Was it wrong to think this way? Clay didn't believe so. He'd believed in liberty and free will just as much as the next healthy, full-blooded American right up until the point where he'd encountered the Templars and realised that everyone's minds and lives were already being manipulated more than they could have possibly imagined, and generally to negative effect. Clay wasn't much of a philosopher, but he'd read John Stuart Mill (hell, he'd _met_ John Stuart Mill during one Animus session) and Mill's principle of utilitarianism seemed like a damn fine philosophy. Those actions which promote happiness are inherently right, and those which cause pain are wrong. Why complicate things further than that?

Was Harold Kaczmarek's drinking and financial difficulty and loneliness "right" because it was part of the path that he'd chosen for himself? Would it be a great moral crime to push his mind in the direction of happiness and contentment? If so, then Clay reckoned he could handle the guilt.

He realised that there was tension pushing at the boundaries of his skin, and tried to remember how long it had been since he'd lanced some power from the Piece of Eden in his arm. Clay had started to notice that the more often he did it, the more often he needed to do it, and tried to conjure up some genuine concern for this fact. Before he could delve into the backpack at his feet for a knife, however, he heard boots stomping across the deck towards him. Not just one person, but many.

Clay didn't turn at first. He stood very still, holding the Apple in his hand and looking out to sea, enjoying the sensation of raw strength and vitality coursing through him. Finally he turned to face what looked like every single Assassin onboard, armed to the teeth but not yet taking aim, with Bill Miles standing at the forefront of them all.

The sight of him was like a punch to Clay's chest, and the smile slid from his face. "Seriously?" he snapped, exasperated. "What is it going to take to put you down?" He tightened his hand around the Apple and it began to glow.

Bill opened his mouth to answer, but stopped when he caught sight of the artefact, confusion clouding his features. "That ... That's a Piece of Eden, an Apple," he said, sounding disbelieving.

Clay watched him very carefully, trying to spot signs that the man was putting on an act. "Yeah, yeah it is."

"Where on Earth did you get it?"

If Bill was pretending, he was putting on a damn fine show - he looked completely floored by the presence of the Apple. Clay saw some of the other Assassins exchange glances, obviously wondering why their leader was so surprised by the sight of the artefact he'd been hoarding for months.

Turning his gaze back to Bill, Clay asked, "If you didn't bring the gang up here for the Apple, what is it you want with me?"

The uncertainty cleared immediately from Bill's face as he drew his eyebrows together fiercely. "My ... son. I don't remember clearly, but I woke up and I ... I knew that you were planning to hurt Desmond. That I had to stop you."

Clay cursed silently. Perhaps it had been too much to hope that this particular bit of mental trickery would remain behind long-term, that he could really make Bill Miles forget that he'd ever had a son. Later, Clay would realise that Bill had found the strength to remember Desmond, but not the Apple. He would think about what that might mean, and for the first time in years would wonder if maybe, just maybe, he had judged Bill Miles incorrectly.

"You told him that he was free to leave," Clay said, taking a few steps forward, moving into the Assassins as they in turn formed a semi-circle around him.

"Yes, I did," Bill replied, his face tense. "But I don't remember giving you permission to _take_ him."

"You think you can stop me?" Clay grinned, wide and defiant and gleeful as he stood close enough to see the swelling and the cut upon Bill's lip. "Given the circumstances I hope you'll forgive a couple of nautical metaphors, because you are lost at sea and out of your depth, old man." He raised the Apple and released a small pulse of energy, just a ripple, and felt a hot thrill of delight as Bill flinched and the collected Assassins cried out and grabbed their heads, one of them even falling to his knees.

When he looked up again, Bill had an expression on his face that was very familiar to Clay: it was the expression of a man trying to look firm and unflustered despite a looping inner monologue of _oh shit_. Clay took a deliberate step forward, and Bill held his ground.

"Still think I need your permission?" Clay asked softly, still wearing a helpless, humourless grin.

"I won't let you hurt him."

"Me?" Clay laughed. "I would kill everyone on this ship to keep him safe. I'm the last person who would-"

"You led him off that roof last year!" Bill accused, suddenly focused again in his anger. "I took him to safety after the fire and you brought Templars into our midst, called down an air strike on his head! Now you want to take him out of shelter again, lead him God knows where. You can tell me that you'd never hurt Desmond, but I've seen his scars, Clay."

Heat blossomed in Clay's chest and expanded until the very temperature of his vision seemed warmer. He gripped the Apple tight, lifted it over his head and concentrated.

Bill's eyes widened and Clay saw a golden light fall over his face, over all of them, as the power of the Piece of Eden spread out around him in a perfect sphere, like an elastic band ready to be snapped and gaining greater power the further it was stretched.

"Oh God," Bill said, then stepped backwards and gave Clay one last awful, anguished, horrified look before he yelled. "Oh God, my God. Shoot him! Shoot him now, all of you!"

Tiny lights began popping in the edges of Clay's vision, and dimly he felt bullets tearing into his clothes and glancing harmlessly off his skin, feeding his righteous fury as he built up more power, the Apple scalding hot against his palm and lighter now, so light that he felt it might lift him off the ground. The energy roared at him for release, but Clay denied it. He pushed the sphere out further, until it touched the ocean and probably the stern of the ship as well.

He never made the decision to let go, but the Apple hit its limits and the sphere snapped closed. There was an odd, inverse sort of sound. It was as though an atomic bomb had been set off somewhere in the distance and the noise of the explosion was approaching, sucking away all other sounds that lay in its path and leaving behind a swollen, unnatural silence.

Clay watched the Assassins fall, one by one, in a wave. Those furthest away from him fell first, dropping to their knees and then flopping into their sides, and the impact came closer and closer until Bill Miles, the last of them, fell before Clay's eyes. Then Clay himself staggered and melted to the ground, feeling weaker than he had ever felt before, as though every drop of energy had been drained from him. He rolled over and closed his eyes, and around him rose the most terrible groans and wails, accompanied by soft knocking sounds as the Assassins thrashed and rocked upon their backs, lost in the unknown torment that the Apple had inflicted.

Moving was impossible, and it hurt to try. Clay stared up into the clouds, grimacing at the sharp ringing noise in his ears. He lost the ability to curl his fingers and the Apple rolled gently out of his hand, hitting the deck with a heavy _clunk_ and trundling away from him.

Clay turned his head to watch it go, and saw Bill Miles. The Apple came to rest about a foot away from him, within arms reach, but Bill did not try to catch it. He was curled in on himself, fingertips clutching at his head so hard that Clay could see the little divets of flesh caving beneath the pressure. He was looking in Clay's direction but it was obvious that he wasn't seeing anything, too lost in the assault on his brain. It was difficult to hear at first, above the jangled chorus of moans around them, but eventually Clay picked out a low and terrible staccato sobbing coming from the back of Bill's throat.

The white clouds overhead expanded outwards suddenly, filling and absorbing everything that they touched, and there was an aching at the top of Clay's spine. He closed his eyes and did not open them again for some time.

* * *

When Clay woke up, it was to an eerie silence.

He sat up and turned his head towards the bow of the ship. The strip of green on the horizon had grown into an entire shoreline, close enough that Clay could make out a beach and a town ahead. It occurred to him that this was strange, since the Assassins had intended to drop anchor long before they got this close to Spain. The movement of the ship felt different now: looser and less controlled.

Clay had never been hit over the head with a frying pan - he doubted that sort of thing ever happened outside of cartoons - but he suspected that the side effects would be similar to what he was currently experiencing. Very gingerly he drew his knees up, then rolled over and pushed himself to his feet, finally turning to face the carnage that he had created.

The Assassins had stopped crying out. Most of them had, like Clay, been granted the mercy of unconsciousness and were lying on their backs or sides with limp limbs. He could see a few, though, who were still curled into positions of agonising muscular tension, eyes wide, shaking almost imperceptibly. Bill Miles was one of the latter sort.

Clay walked over and knelt down by Bill's side. The older man didn't seem to react to his presence. Staring into the old familiar face, Clay felt a sudden and violent sense of unease and nausea. Hurriedly he reached for his old spite and hatred, and was scandalised to find it gone and replaced with hurt and despair and the bubbling beginnings of devastating regret.

"Bill?" he whispered, reaching out with one hand and placing it upon his old mentor's shoulder. His voice sounded thin and pathetic even to his own ears. "William?" Still no response, and Clay felt a dreadful flush on panic, and without meaning to found himself addressing Bill in the same way he had when they'd first met. "Mr Miles?"

It was probably nothing to do with Clay, and simply the long effects of strain finally taking their toll, but Bill finally shuddered and went limp.

Clay stared at him stupidly. He was afraid to move. Keeping the rest of his body very still, he reached out and pressed the tips of his middle and index fingers against Bill's throat, at the point where it met his jaw.

There was a strong pulse there. Bill's body was still functional, at any rate, but Clay wouldn't like to guess at the state of his mind. He thought about Masyaf after the air strike, of the total devastation and annihilation of any recognisable landmarks. It was probably an apt metaphor.

The Apple, miraculously, had not rolled away and off the ship altogether. It lay where it had been dropped, but it looked different now, wearing an aura of nasty satisfaction. Clay found himself averse to the idea of even touching it, but reluctantly picked it up with his fingertips and stuffed it into his backpack, which he then swung onto one shoulder.

The sun was high in the sky, and with a jolt Clay realised that Desmond was not here. The alarm would have gone off hours ago, so where was he? Suddenly fired up with new purpose, Clay began jogging across the deck towards the main part of the ship, figuring that their cabin would be the most likely place to find Desmond. On the way, he found himself passing the bridge of the ship with its expansive glass windows, and a glance inside told him that the giant sphere of energy had touched this place too: the Assassins who had been piloting the ship were twitching upon the ground, and the helm was rotating gently from side to side.

That explained why they were so close to Spain, then (Clay felt a sudden prickling on the back of his neck). No one had dropped anchor and the propellers were still turning (a heavy weight in his stomach, as though his guts had reached a conclusion before his brain had). When the sphere of energy had (sphere ... a sphere...)

"No," Clay breathed, and suddenly the whole world seemed to freeze.

Probably the only reason he didn't simply tear his way down through the decks with his bare hands was that he realised running would get him there faster. He glanced off walls and doors on his way down, not feeling any pain, leaping over railings in order to descend the stairs faster. Finally he reached the deck where their cabin was located, the corridor that led to it, and he could see something lying half-in and half-out of the doorway

Clay's throat was raw from the wild gasps he had been taking on his way down, but he still found the strength to scream and moan hoarsely as he ran the last stretch, a jumbled concoction of curse words and Desmond's name and the endless _no no no_ denial that failed to reverse time and undo this damage.

Desmond was awake, his eyes wide and empty and red from lack of moisture. There was blood around his mouth as though he had been biting his lips and tongue, and when Clay prised Desmond's fingers away from his face they left behind large, circular bruises. He appeared to have been hit by the wave of energy just as he was leaving the cabin, and there was a nasty gash on his arm where he had struck the door on his way down.

Clay stepped over his friend, his only friend, and pulled him half-upright with a desperate grunt of exertion. When Desmond was in his arms, Clay drew upon the power of the amulet inside his arm, felt its warm, healing glow spread outwards. Desmond's cuts and bruises melted away, leaving behind unmarred skin, but not matter how hard Clay concentrated he could feel that there was something inside Desmond that was unfixed and unfixable. Consumed with horror and a slow, snowballing acknowledgement of what he had done, Clay buried his face in the short mess of dark hair in front of him and wept tears of impotent sorrow.

A few miles away, but getting closer every second, the tourists and locals alike who were sunning themselves on the beach frowned at the sight of a white ship approaching the bay head-on and showing no signs of slowing down.


	20. Chapter 20

**Introductory note**: _This chapter is slightly later than usual because I have been fully engaged in the mammoth task of avoiding having Assassin's Creed 3 spoiled for me. I can't afford the game yet and I am a HUGE spoilerphobic. So far so good, and the outlook is positive as even several months on I have still managed to avoid having the end of Mass Effect 3 spoiled for me. Yes, even after all the controversy. One day I will actually buy both games and stop living in constant fear. ;-)_

_Coming close to the end of Disparate now. Thank you all for your feedback, and I'm sorry for breaking Desmond._

* * *

Eduardo had been in the Spanish Coast Guard for five years when the incident occurred, and was made somewhat giddy by the small amount of fame that followed. As the first person to board the 'ghost ship', he was picked for an interview by the local news crew, and the interview was shown on television. He sat his young daughter on his knee and felt his heart swell with pride as she gaped at her daddy talking on the same screen where all her favourite cartoon characters lived. It was a tragedy and a mystery, of course, but would also become one of the highlights of his life.

Perhaps it was because of this that there was something irritating in his memory of it - something he could not quite put his finger on. He remembered stepping onto the deck and finding all those people. He remembered ordering several officers to the bridge, commanding them to do whatever they could to slow the ship before it ran aground. He remembered ordering the remaining men to get the ship's crew onto the Coast Guard boat, to save as many of them as they could. But somewhere in all of this he was sure he had taken an order or two himself.

What he forgot was this.

He had been standing at the bow of the ship, staring worriedly at the shore, calling in on his radio to ensure that the beach had been evacuated. He hoped that they would be able to drop anchor before the ship ran aground, but he didn't want to take any risks. He had turned to speak to his partner, Blas, who was standing behind him, but had been interrupted by the sight of something over Blas' shoulder.

"Hey!" he yelled, striding down towards the two figures who had just emerged from the bowels of the ship. They were the only passengers so far that he'd seen who seemed to be conscious and in their own minds: they were upright, though one had his arm slung around the other's shoulders and was effectively being dragged along like a staggering sack of meat.

Blas was at his shoulder, and as they grew closer he gave a small gasp and muttered, "Jesus, Ed. Look at him, look at his face."

Though he was loathe to admit it, let alone wear glasses, Eduardo was a little short-sighted. Because of this, he did not understand what Blas was referring to until they drew close to the two men and he saw the fair-haired man and his expression. It was more terrifying than when he'd stepped onboard and seen what looked like a pile of corpses. The expression on the man's face made Eduardo want to turn tail and get as far away from this ship as he possibly could.

Finally they stood face-to-face, and Eduardo spoke, trying to keep maintain his composure as he looked into the blond man's eyes. "What happened here?" he asked. "Who-"

"Get us to shore."

The man was speaking English, in what sounded like an American accent. Luckily Eduardo was fluent: had to be, for his job. He continued in the same language. "We will get you to shore, sir, but we need to ask..."

"You don't need to ask anything, you need to get us on your boat right now."

"Whose ship is this? Are you two crew or passengers?" Eduardo glanced over at the man who was slumped against the blond's side, his eyes open but vacant and his body as limp as a rag doll. "What happened to him, to the others?"

"Goddamnit," the American muttered. Very, very gently, like a mother handling a newborn baby, he lowered his burden to the deck, leaning the man against the wall and touching his face very briefly. Then he slid a green backpack off his other shoulder and unzipped it.

"Blas!" Eduardo said urgently, reaching into his gun holster and seeing his partner do the same. The man did not draw a weapon, however, but instead pulled a strange-looking metal sphere from the bag. It was golden and glowed with a strangely soothing light. Eduardo stared at it, his gun hand slowly lowering to his side again as the man straightened up.

"Take us to your boat," the man asked again, and suddenly the request seemed a lot more reasonable.

Barely had Eduardo assented than he felt the ship give a slightly sharp jolt, one that he knew all too well. They had dropped anchor in time and the ship was tethered in shallow waters, its hull probably a scant handful of feet from the sea bed. He breathed a sigh of relief; even with his men working as fast as they could, they'd only managed to get a few of the unconscious passengers into a lifeboat so far: had the ship run aground, things would have got messy.

Eduardo had his men transport the last of the passengers into one of the ship's life boats and assigned two officers to take it ashore, where they would be met by the ambulances he'd called for. The American had told Eduardo to leave any mention of himself and his compatriot out of the reports, and that seemed to make sense. A few other members of the Coast Guard looked at them curiously, but whenever they drew close the light from that curious sphere would fall on their faces and they would relax. Eduardo personally oversaw the transfer of the two men into his own boat, and accompanied them on the trip back to the shore.

Before they parted ways, the American instructed Eduardo and Blas to hand over all the cash in their wallets and then forget that they had ever seen him. No official reports of the incident made mention of the two men who had emerged from below decks, and none of the Coast Guard ever recalled seeing them. Clay and Desmond entered the country like ghosts.

* * *

"What the hell happened?"

Clay looked up sharply. He'd been sitting on the docks of Valencia, in the lee of a shipyard warehouse with Desmond propped up against the cold brick wall, seeing nothing and hearing nothing. Clay had known somewhere in his head that he needed a plan, that he needed to get them both somewhere safe before nightfall, but he couldn't quite get his brain to function properly.

Now he saw someone jogging towards the pair of them, and with a kind of dull surprise he registered that it was Rebecca, hair longer than usual and looking exposed and vulnerable without the customary helmet of her headphones. She knelt down beside him and stared from one man to the other.

"I was supposed to rendez-vous with you guys at 5! I got here a few hours early and suddenly there's Bill and the others being loaded into goddamn ambulances looking half-dead, and you two ... what's wrong with Desmond?"

Clay didn't know how to even begin explaining it. He wasn't sure that he understood what had happened himself. It was like waking up the morning after a bar crawl and knowing that you'd done something awful, but not yet being aware enough to fully comprehend it. "What does it look like?" he replied dully.

"It looks like he's on standby or something. Geez, it's creepy." Rebecca waved a hand experimentally in front of Desmond's eyes, which failed to follow or focus. She took hold of his chin gently in her fingertips and lifted his head until he was more or less looking into her face "Desmond. You in there?"

A horrible tightening sensation took hold in Clay's gut as the implications of her question hit him. "We should get out of here," he said quickly. "Do you have a car?"

Rebecca looked completely turned around, and stared at him for a couple of seconds before replying. "Yeah, I have a car, but you have to tell me what's..."

"Is there a safehouse near here?"

"Goddamnit, Clay, would you please explain..."

"Do you want an explanation or do you want to survive?" Clay asked with an icy edge to his voice. It was unlikely that any Templars were actually here, but Rebecca didn't know that and Clay couldn't have this conversation in a shipyard. He couldn't deal with the Desmond situation until they were both safe, and it was a situation which desperately needed to be dealt with.

He kept up his fierce gaze and eventually Rebecca relented and nodded. "I'm parked not too far from here. Come on, I'll help you move Desmond."

"I don't need your help." Clay deliberately blocked her with his body as he gently wrapped one of Desmond's arms around his shoulder, placing his own arm around Desmond's waist, and lifted the unresisting man up into an approximate standing position.

Rebecca stared, then made a noise of disgust in the back of her throat as she turned and began walking away, calling over her shoulder: "Fine, but if you don't keep up then I'm leaving without you."

* * *

The safehouse was a tense twenty minute drive away. Rebecca fired questions almost constantly throughout the journey, but Clay, who was in the back with Desmond, keeping his eyes desperately fixed to the younger man's face in the hopes of spying some recognition, either brushed the inquiries off or failed to respond at all. The close houses and shops of Valencia gave way to the verdant Spanish countryside, and they followed the winding route of a river until Rebecca finally turned off into a barely-visible driveway, which led up to a large house with converted stables to the side and an elevated grain store out the front.

Once inside, Clay guided Desmond to the stairs. He'd expected to have to do some kind of fireman lift to get the unresponsive man up them, but instead found Desmond lifting his own feet whenever his toes scraped the vertical edge of a step. Clay stared into Desmond's face but found the same vacant blankness there; it seemed to be nothing more than a reflex response. They were halfway up when Desmond's legs suddenly gave up altogether and his body dropped heavily, Clay releasing a soft grunt as he hastened to tighten his hold and bear all of Desmond's weight.

He knew he could call for Rebecca to help him, but this was something that Clay needed to do by himself. It was a simple function that he could perform to hold off the screaming void of horror that denial was currently protecting him from. By sheer chance the first doorway he kicked open led into a bedroom.

Desmond lay where he was dropped, his head flopping loosely and coming to rest at an odd, disturbing, tilted-back angle, like a car-crash victim. Clay slid one hand around the back of Desmond's head, cupping it with the reverence of Hamlet holding Yorick's remains, and lifted it enough that he could slide a pillow underneath it. The angle of his head looked more comfortable, but Desmond might as well have been placed in a vat of acid for all the difference it made to his expression. His pupils were centred and constricted in the bright light that streamed in from the window, and were surrounded by a thick moat of deep hazel. Clay knew these eyes, this face, better than he knew his own, and he'd never wanted to see Desmond like this again.

Suddenly, Clay couldn't bear to be in the same room as this facsimile a second longer. He backed up sharply, turning and hitting his knee on the door in his hurry to leave. He closed the door sharply behind him and leaned back against it for a few moments, taking breathing slowly through his nose until the shaking subsided.

Rebecca was waiting in the kitchen when Clay descended the stairs. It looked like some kind of rental holiday cottage, with tacky pictures of kittens hanging on the walls, soft brown varnished surfaces, a big iron oven dominating the narrow end and a dainty window looking out onto the front yard. It looked like the last place on earth that you'd look for a group of deadly Assassins, but that was probably what made it such a good hideout.

Reluctantly tearing his eyes away from the picturesque scene outside, Clay walked over to the table, braced both hands on it and lifted himself up so that he was sitting on the sturdy oak furniture.

He took a deep breath with his eyes cast downwards, then looked up and spent a couple of minutes explaining the events that had taken place since they'd left Syria.

When he was finished, Rebecca shook her head and gave a stuttering, disbelieving laugh. "This is just ... amazing. When everyone was accusing you of starting that fire, I put my ass on the line every day defending you. I just knew deep down that you weren't really capable of doing that, of hurting all those people."

"Well, I guess you were wrong. Sorry."

"Oh, fuck you! Don't even bother trying to do your Byronic hero act with me, Clay. The amount of time you spent down in the basement, I got to know you, and you're nowhere near as big a sociopath as you pretend to be." She took a couple of steps forward and glared up at him. "You got drawn in by the Apple just like everyone else, then you lost your temper and you screwed up big time. It doesn't make you evil, but it is something that you're going to have to deal with. How is shutting down like this going to help Desmond?"

A mixture of anger and humiliation burned hot inside Clay. He had an urge to get out of the room, to damage himself in some way so that he could feel the cool release of power from the Piece of Eden. He also wanted to go and get the Apple, to hold it tight and shut Rebecca up so that she'd never talk again. He fought down both impulses in favour of defending himself.

"You think I _don't_ want to help him? I love Desmond, I would die for him..."

Rebecca snorted dismissively. "How noble."

"What do you-?"

"Dying is _easy_, Clay. It's so easy that everybody ends up doing it sooner or later, and saying that you're willing to die for someone else is the biggest cop-out in existence. The only reason _you're_ saying it is because you've messed up so badly that you think there's no way of fixing it."

"Well is there?"

"I don't know! Maybe not. What if he stays catatonic indefinitely? Do you love Desmond enough that you'd be willing to spend the next forty years spoon-feeding him and taking him to the bathroom? I know that statement doesn't quite have the same ring to it..."

"Yes. I would. Of course I would."

"Really? Because when he was in a coma you decided to bail out after just a few months."

Clay's mouth dropped open, and then he slowly closed it again when he realised that he had no response to that. Rebecca was right, even if she only had a partial understanding of his reasons. Clay had pulled away from Desmond not because he had fallen out of love with him, but because he found it too painful to be so fundamentally connected to a person who couldn't speak or respond. Clay had run away from the situation and then, just as now, the consequences of his actions had all fallen upon Desmond.

"OK," he said, when he'd finally swallowed his pride. "You're right. I'm not going to give up on him yet, though. There has to be something that we can do."

Rebecca folded her arms and frowned, in deep thought rather than anger now. "Well, a good place to start would be figuring out what you did to Desmond and the others in the first place. What exactly happened when you used the Apple?"

Clay described the experience to her. It took about ten minutes of fumbled metaphors and hand gestures and dodgy adjectives, with Rebecca prompting him to answer specific questions whenever he fell silent.

Finally Clay couldn't offer any more descriptions and Rebecca seemed to be satisfied. "Right," she said, with a thoughtful nod. "Sounds like you gave them all a massive psychic kick in the butt."

"Is that the medical term for it?"

"Don't sass me, Kaczmarek, I'm not in the mood. The Apple is an incredibly complex piece of technology. Altaïr studied it for an entire lifetime and still didn't uncover all its secrets. It sounds like your DNA was capable of unlocking a very basic aspect of its power and you pulled the trigger on it. Kind of like picking up a high-spec laptop and breaking it over someone's head."

"You think I ... cavemanned them?" Clay didn't know whether to be insulted or amused by the analogy.

"Right. So in theory there might be some way to use the Apple to repair the damage. But..." Rebecca's face fell and she shook her head gloomily. "You saw what Desmond is like now. That kind of blunt neuropsychological trauma might well be irreversible."

"That's what we thought when he was in a coma. He woke up from that." Clay knew that he sounded desperate now, but he had to cling onto whatever slivers of hope he had, because the very idea of Desmond living out the rest of his natural life in a state of catatonia was too horrifying to comprehend. More so because it would all be Clay's fault - he would have to look at Desmond every day, at his limp frame and empty eyes, knowing that he had ended up that way because of Clay's own actions.

Rebecca didn't look nearly as optimistic. "It's the coma that's worrying me. I never got a chance to examine him but I can't imagine how he ever wrested himself out of that state. It's likely that Desmond's mind was still too weakened by the coma to produce any kind of defence, and the amount of energy that you threw at him..." Her voice trailed away as she looked into Clay's face.

He had stopped listening to her a couple of sentences back, and was staring white-faced out of the window, his heart thudding so loudly that he could hear the sonorous pulse of it in his ears. He found himself torn between a raging, slamming, tortured bubble of joy and relief that was trying to force its way into dominance, and an awful creeping chill of paranoia that he had finally lost his mind altogether.

"Clay?" Rebecca said softly, the ripple of anger and despair gone from her voice now.

"I think we have a chance of helping Desmond," Clay said, astounded by how calm the words came out.

"What? Why?"

"Because he's running away from the house."


	21. Chapter 21

Desmond was standing ankle-deep in the river when Clay finally caught up with him. He had toed his shoes off and left them on the bank. Now he was crouching down to cup water in his left hand, trickling it through his fingers so that it poured into the receiving bowl of his right hand, before finally bringing it to his mouth to drink. Under other circumstances Clay might have been annoyed at the tranquillity of this scene, since he'd nearly broken his shoulder bursting out of the house and his heart was up in his throat with how fast it was beating. He slowed down when he reached Desmond and approached cautiously, like a hunter creeping up on a deer.

When his toes were sinking into the muddy bank, Desmond finally turned his head a little and glanced up, droplets of water clinging to his chin. Then he returned to his task, washing the refuse of wood and leaves from his left hand before once again using it as a filter for the water he trickled into his right.

"What are you doing out here?" Clay heard himself asked, afterwards deciding that there were worse ways to start this conversation.

"I woke up, and I was thirsty."

"So you figured you'd just jump out of a second storey window and sprint for the nearest body of water? Ever heard of a tap?" Clay stepped into the river beside Desmond, water immediately soaking into his socks and sneakers, and leaned down to place a hesitant hand upon Desmond's shoulder. "Come back up to the house, alright?"

Desmond flicked the remaining water from his hands and stood up, turning to look at Clay. He was wearing an expression that was strangely familiar, though Clay couldn't quite recall where he had seen it before. He looked neither angry nor hurt, but instead examined Clay with a somewhat sterile interest. "What is in the house?" he asked.

"Clean water, for one thing. Food, and ... Christ, Desmond, I think we need to talk!"

"That will not be necessary," Desmond stated, turning away from Clay as though he had ceased to be a point of interest. He walked up the bank and towards the house, stooping gracefully to grab his shoes along the way and padding bare-footed over the grass.

Clay stared for a moment before following him. "Look, I fucked up, badly. You have no idea how sorry I..."

"You're apologising to the wrong person," Desmond called back, turning his head to direct the words over his shoulder.

Clay had to take a moment or two to guess what that might mean. "Right, well I think they took your dad to the hospital. We'll go and find him later - if you woke up then there's every chance..."

Desmond stopped and turned so suddenly that Clay nearly collided with him. He said, sounding more than a little exasperated, "Desmond did not wake up."

Clay gave a short, instinctive laugh, before realising how serious Desmond was being. "OK, I'll bite," he said. "What is this, sleep-talking?"

"You're mistaken. I am not Desmond Miles. My name is Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad."

There was a beat of silence, during which Clay gave a small huff of relief. "Oh, thank God."

He'd originally yelled at Rebecca to stay behind, knowing that he was faster on his feet than her and figuring that they would want to spook Desmond as little as possible. It seemed that she'd grown impatient, however, and upon seeing the two of them standing in front of the house came jogging out to meet him. "What happened?" she asked, directing the first question to both of them before turning to Clay to ask the second. "Is he OK?"

"Yeah," Clay said, a small laugh escaping him before he amended. "I mean, he's nuts, but other than that he's fine."

"He's nuts?" Rebecca repeated. She glanced back at Desmond, who had apparently borne the comment with no chagrin.

"Bleeding effect," Clay clarified. "Should wear off soon enough, now that we've got him up and moving again."

"This is not the bleeding effect," Desmond said quietly.

That silenced the other two. Clay felt a nasty prickling in his stomach as he saw Rebecca frown like a doctor discovering a large tumour on an X-ray. "Crap," she muttered. "That's not good."

"What's not good?" Clay demanded.

She moved closer to him and spoke softly, in confidence. "I've seen a hell of a lot of people go through the Animus program and experience the bleeding effect. Whenever it happens, they lose all awareness of the modern world and get lost in their ancestor's memories. This is different. You see how he's reacting to us? He knows who we are, he even knows what the bleeding effect is, but he still thinks he's Altaïr."

"But he's _not_." Clay stepped in front of Desmond and talked to him slowly. "Try to remember. Your name is Desmond Miles, you..."

"I do remember Desmond Miles," Desmond interrupted. "I know Desmond Miles. But I am not Desmond Miles."_  
_

"How do you know Desmond?" Rebecca asked, waving a hand at Clay before he could point out the stupidity of the question.

Desmond's eyes flickered, just for a moment, before he replied. "Desmond was in a coma for one year. He was lost inside my memories. It was too painful for him to remember his own life whilst living through mine, and so he gave his mind over to me." Desmond turned his gaze back to Clay, speaking with sincerity. "He was mine, for a year. Then there was a fire, and he woke up, believing he could leave me behind. He crushed me down inside of himself, but I did not die, I did not recede, I merely waited. Now Desmond is gone, and his body is mine."

A shocked silence followed this statement, and Desmond took the opportunity to step around Clay and continue walking back to the house. Clay waited until he was out of earshot before glancing over at Rebecca and raising his eyebrows.

"Yeah, he's nuts. Could be worse, I guess."

Rebecca chewed on her lip and said nothing.

"What?" Clay demanded, folding his arms. "What's with the face?"

"I dunno..."

"Wow, you know things have gotten bad when I have to be the voice of sanity. In case you'd forgotten, Altaïr is _dead_. His bones are rotting under a pile of rubble in Masyaf. That..." Clay jabbed a finger in the direction of the house. "Is not Altaïr."

"Would you shut up for a second? I'm trying to think."

"It's not possible," Clay insisted, suddenly infuriated that Rebecca was even taking the time to consider things.

She shrugged, looking helpless and distressed. "I mean, I'm one of the experts on Animus technology and even I'm not totally sure how it all works. We're like kids playing in somebody else's sandbox here. If the Animus can unlock the memories of our ancestors and bring them into the 21st century, then we shouldn't discount the possibility that..."

"That what? That it can bring dead people back to life?" Clay had to laugh at the idea, it sounded so ridiculous when stated aloud. "You're going to be pretty embarrassed when Desmond gets over this in a couple of hours."

"I hope so. I really do." Rebecca stared over Clay's shoulder, back towards the house, and chewed her lower lip.

* * *

It wasn't difficult to find Desmond again. He was standing in the kitchen, staring at one of the decorative kitten plates with a somewhat bemused expression. He turned briefly when Clay entered the room, and on the journey his gaze stopped at the small, boxy television on the counter. Quirking a smile, Clay walked over to it and turned it on.

"Yeah, we call this a 'television set'," he said, with slow sarcasm "It's like a magic box with pictures inside..."

"I know what it is," Desmond interrupted. His voice was odd: he spoke in English, with his usual soft New York accent, but the nuances and vocal tics were not Desmond's. It wasn't that they were strange - Clay wished that that were the case. They were all too familiar, embedded in Clay's memories of his first encounters with Desmond, back when they were forced to use their ancestors as proxies for communication.

"Did you learn about televisions using the Apple," Rebecca asked. She had appeared in the doorway whilst Clay was lost in thought.

Desmond shook his head. "I know because Desmond knew," he replied. "I have not spent much time studying the Apple."

"Not much time?" Rebecca echoed disbelievingly. "Didn't you spent about seventy years with it?"

Desmond shook his head, frowning. "Perhaps, but I don't recall them."

"What's the last thing you remember? From your own ... I mean, from Altaïr's life?"

To Clay's surprise, a slight blush crept into Desmond's cheeks and he neither replied nor looked Rebecca directly in the eye. She waited for a moment, and then gave an extremely saucy grin.

"Oh, right," she said. "It's obvious."

"What's obvious?" Clay asked, the question coming out harsher than he had intended.

Rebecca leaned in and replied in a loud, not-very-confidential whisper. "Well, we know how the Animus works, right? It unlocks genetic memory, and a parent can only pass on their genetic memory up until the point of conception. It's not like you can keep downloading your memories into your kid's DNA after they're born." She nodded at Desmond. "We got lucky with Ezio because he didn't reproduce until he was in his fifties, so you and Desmond were able to relive most of his life through the Animus. But Altaïr was still in his twenties when he and Maria conceived Darim, and not much older when they made Sef, so most of Altaïr's life can't be accessed through the Animus."

Temporarily distracted from his anger by the theory Rebecca was proposing, Clay rubbed his temple. "But Desmond did relive later periods of Altaïr's life..."

"Only through Ezio, and his memories of the information Altaïr stored on the five Masyaf keys. Whenever Desmond tried to access Altaïr's memories using the Animus, they always cut off with, uh, with Darim. The moment of conception. If you catch my drift." She raised her eyebrows pointedly.

Clay caught her drift. "So the last thing you remember," he said, directing the question at Desmond now and unable to keep a mocking tone out of his voice. "Is fucking Maria? Nice."

If Desmond's body wasn't still weakened by the coma, Clay might well have died within seconds of speaking those words. As it was, he barely even registered Desmond's movement before a stunning blow caught him on his cheek, knocking his head sideways into a kitchen cabinet, the double impact sending him straight to the floor with white lights popping in his vision. He heard Rebecca cry out, saw her move to restrain Desmond, but the man was already backing off and showing no signs of stress save for the slightly heavy breathing through his nose.

"Never speak about Maria to me again," he said menacingly. "You never knew her."

"Neither did you, you crazy moron!" Clay yelled from the floor, the noise of his voice hurting his own head.

Desmond moved as though he was about to continue the fight but Rebecca, despite being a good few inches shorter than him and about fifty pounds lighter, stepped sharply into his path and thrust the heel of her hand into his chest.

"OK, I think you need to cool off," she said. "Both of you," she added, turning her head to look at Clay pointedly.

Ignoring the pounding in his head and the shakiness in his limbs, he managed to force himself to his feet again, sliding upwards along the cupboards and cabinets and finally clinging onto the counter for support. When he was sure that he wasn't about to throw up, Clay lifted his head to meet Desmond's eye, desperately searching his face for regret, concern, tenderness, anything at all that he recognised. He found nothing but disdain and annoyance. Desmond stepped back, away from Rebecca's hand, and left the room without so much as a backwards glance.


	22. Chapter 22

Clay spend the rest of the day preparing an apology for when Desmond pulled himself together and remembered his true identity. It was no easy task. He had no idea how to go about begging forgiveness for an act that he'd yet to forgive himself for. There was no excuse for it, none whatsoever. Clay had known the dangers of the Pieces of Eden but had been too arrogant to believe that they might apply to him. Immediately after the confrontation in the kitchen, his emotions had been running so high that he'd felt the familiar burning in his skin and been forced to rush to an upstairs bathroom and slash at his arm with yet another broken razorblade, repeating the action for a good five minutes before he felt in control again.

He realised now that the Piece of Eden was a greater danger than it was a boon, but Clay did not dare to cut it out. He had no idea what the consequences of that step might be, and could therefore only take it as a last resort.

For the rest of the day he trailed Desmond, who appeared to be attempting to learn the lay of the land surrounding their hideout. He spoke little, and his gait differed from its normal dogged jog: now smoother and more silent, barely seeming to crush the grass beneath his feet. Whenever he stopped, Clay would catch up with him and try to engage him in conversation, waiting for the moment that the bleeding effect would wear off.

He'd hoped that his presence would speed recovery along, but it either had the opposite effect or none at all. Upon his approach, Desmond would glance at him with ill-disguised irritation and respond shortly to any questions fired at him, no matter how antagonistic. By the end of the day he had not wavered in his claim that he was Altaïr, not Desmond, and when night fell he retired to an upstairs room with a single bed, closing the door pointedly behind him.

Three hours later, Rebecca came upstairs.

She looked exhausted and tense, her hair now pulled back into a messy ponytail that didn't suit her, and was carrying a flashlight since the upstairs landing had no overhead lamp. She turned the beam to the left, then turned her head with it as she swept it the right, starting and giving a small cry.

Clay lifted a hand wearily to shield his face from the light. "It's OK," he said. "Just me."

"What are you doing out here?" Rebecca whispered, crouching down beside him and setting the flashlight down. "I thought you were asleep."

"How can I sleep?" Clay asked softly, leaning his head back against the panelled wood of Desmond's door.

"There are other rooms..."

"That's not the reason. You know it's not." Rebecca didn't reply, and Clay wondered if she was regretting having stopped to speak with him. She must be incredibly tired, perhaps even more so than Clay himself. "You should go to bed," he added. "I'll be fine."

"You're not fine."

It shook him to hear someone else say it. Clay ground his teeth, hating himself for this pathetic display of weakness and self-pity.

"Did something else happen?" Rebecca probed gently. "Did he say something...?"

"I asked him what he meant," Clay answered in a hollow voice. "When he said that Desmond was gone. He said that it was hard to find the right word for it. I asked him to try, and he said that the best word he could come up with was 'dead'. He says that Desmond is dead, that I killed him and ... and..."

His voice wasn't hollow any more. It was filled up, to the brim, and his throat was too swollen to speak. His face contorted and he dropped it into one hand so that Rebecca wouldn't see. The darkness in front of his eyes was replaced by an ugly instant replay of the earlier conversation.

_"What the fuck do you mean, he's dead? What would you know?"_

_"I can tell you only what I remember. For a long time after the coma I was muffled, buried underneath Desmond's conscious mind. Then something happened. It was as though I had been a mouse, sheltering under a stone in a field. When you released that energy wave, it was like the stone was caught in the path of a farmer's plough. I remember feeling Desmond's mind ripped away, shredded into nothingness, and I was left exposed and alone. Even when we were together in the Animus, and I was in control, I was always able to feel Desmond just half a breath away. Now I do not feel him at all. He is gone. He is dead. I have no other way of saying this. I am sorry."_

"Do you believe him," Rebecca asked, after a tense pause.

"Should I?" Clay snapped in an explosive whisper. He glanced back at the door and lowered his voice again, though it still shook with rage. "You were the one who insisted that this ... this_ bullshit_ was possible." He ground his teeth together. "Is this some kind of punishment for what I did? Is the universe trying to make me believe that I killed Desmond, just so I can learn some lesson about responsibility? I've learned my fucking lesson, Rebecca, so when is this going to end?"

Rebecca was looking at him sadly, and Clay hated it. He hated the pity in her eyes, which was telling him something that he didn't want to hear. Then she went ahead and told him out loud.

"I don't think it's a punishment," she murmured, placing her hand tentatively over one of Clay's. "I think ... I think that if Desmond really is gone - and I'm not saying that it's a certainty - but if he is, then maybe it's just a consequence that we all have to bear."

"That's not fair! Why should Desmond have to pay for something_ I_ did? It's not his fault that I was an idiot, that I decided to steal the Apple and use it. Why couldn't it have been my mind that got creamed?"

"Do you believe in karma? I don't. Action and consequence, that's all we have, and sometimes that means bad things happen to good people."

Clay gave a choked laugh. "Is that what I am? A bad thing that happened to a good person?"

"That's not what I..."

"But it's true. I had my chance with Desmond. Hell, I had a second chance with him. I wasted them both, I deserve this, I..." _Fuck._ He couldn't cry in front of Rebecca, but he didn't want to move from Desmond's door either. As a compromise, Clay reached down and clicked the button on the flashlight, plunging them both into darkness. When it was done, he bit into the side of his hand to muffle any noise as liquid salt dripped painfully from his eyes. He wished he could stay here, in the dark, forever. He didn't want to wake up tomorrow and face Desmond's shell. He was tired of waiting for the next moment when he would need to slice himself open just to stay in one piece. He did not want to face a lifetime spent suffering the loneliness that he had brought upon himself, knowing that he had come within touching distance of happiness and thrown it all away.

In the darkness, Rebecca's hand tightened on his. She shuffled closer and Clay felt her settle beside him with her back to Desmond's door. Then she carefully guided his head down until it rested on her shoulder, and his tears soaked into her shirt as she stroked his hair soothingly.

"I don't think Desmond is dead," she murmured.

Clay winced at the reintroduction of this idea. "You can't know that."

"Perhaps not, but I think you can. You've used the Animus more than anyone. Tell me, what did Malik feel when his arm was amputated?"

"I'd guess he felt pain."

"Yes, pain, but what did he _think_? What emotions ran through him when he woke up and his arm was gone? How did he psychologically adjust to the loss?"

"I don't know."

"Why not?"

"You don't experience stuff like that, just audiovisual memory, smell, taste, touch, nothing internal..."

"Exactly. Nothing internal. It's the same with every person I've ever met who's used the Animus. They could recall perfect details about things they'd seen, but they never had any clue how their ancestors reacted, aside from what was said aloud. Memories of emotions and innermost thoughts simply can't be accessed by the Animus. I think that the essence of what we are, the real meat and bones of the soul, can't be passed on in a bunch of chromosomes. Now that I've had time to really think about it, I just can't believe that the person in that room is Altaïr."

"Then who the hell is he? Because he seems pretty convinced that he's not Desmond."

"Well, he told us that Desmond spent the timespan of his coma reliving Altaïr's early life. Maybe the person we spoke to is ... the seed of Desmond's personality, grown in the soil of Altaïr's memories. A kind of tertiary identity that isn't really Desmond or Altaïr, but something in between."

Clay's heart, which had temporarily found a place where the pain was eased, began to hurt again. "So you think that Desmond as we knew him is still gone?"

"Maybe Desmond as I knew him, as the others knew him. But you know him better than any of us. If anyone can find him again, it's you."


	23. Chapter 23

When Clay woke up, he was still in the hall outside Desmond's room. There was a cushion under his head and a blanket draped over him, which had probably been put there by Rebecca. Despite these small comforts, he was still shivery and aching from a night on the thinly-carpeted floor, and he groaned as he stretched out the stiffness in his muscles before descending the stairs to the kitchen.

"What do you mean?" He heard the sharp question asked just as he reached the doorway.

"You don't remember this?" Rebecca said, sounding surprised.

"I remember nothing since the fire. How can Masyaf be gone?"

"It was bombed. There's a war in Syria..."

"There's always a war in Syria, but Masyaf has endured through the centuries. Now you tell me that there's nothing left of it? Nothing left of my home?"

"It's not your home," Clay interrupted, stalking into the room and turning to flick the switch on the kettle as he passed. "Your home is New York."

Desmond exhaled slowly through his nose and Clay saw his shoulders tense up. "Stay out of this," he said shortly.

Seeing an argument starting to brew, Rebecca took a step forward and said, "Altaïr..."

"Don't call him that!" Clay snapped at her, harsher than he had intended. "You want to confuse him even more?"

"I am not confused, and I am standing right here," Desmond retorted, equally sharply.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Mr 'I'm Possessed By My Dead Ancestor'. Tell me more about how well-adjusted you're feeling."

"Clay, for God's sake..." Rebecca was staring at him disbelievingly and making some odd kind of hand gesture that seemed to be intended to placate him. It wasn't working.

"What, now you think we should enable this crap?"

"How exactly is yelling at him supposed to help him?"

"I don't need your help," Desmond said. He spoke quietly, yet the words resonated through the room, somehow insidiously commanding their silence. "From what you have told me, the Assassins have become a shadow of their former selves. You are scattered and weak, and Masyaf is fallen. If anything, _you_ need _my_ help."

In the silence that followed, the kettle came to the boil and clicked off. Clay made no move towards it. Here it was again: the old problem of feeling sure that their was some combination of words out there which would fix Desmond and clear that alien expression from his face, soften his features into their old uncertainty and bravery and fondness. Perhaps such a phrase did exist, but Clay had no idea what it might be, and suddenly the task of repairing Desmond's mind, repairing the damage done by Clay's own mistakes, seemed near-impossible once more.

"I am asking you to accept my leadership," Desmond said, his voice still soft.

Clay felt his mouth twist into a sneer, and in a voice that he would never quite forget he said, "I see you haven't lost your arrogance,_ novice_."

The muscles in Desmond's face appeared to freeze up temporarily.

"You see? It's not so hard. I remember watching Kadar die and thinking what I felt was my own grief..."

"Stop it."

"... But I moved past it, I separated Malik from Clay and I figured out which one was real."

"You aren't worthy to even speak his name."

Clay ignored that and barrelled on. "You helped me, when I was at my most unhinged, when I was lost. I'm not going to just give up on you now, Desmond, not when you need me..."

"I don't need you," Desmond bit out, with slow, controlled anger. "That is just what you tell yourself to justify your own selfishness. The truth is that _you_ need Desmond, and you have no qualms about breaking me apart in order to find him. But he's not here, Clay. Desmond is dead."

Communications broke down after that.

* * *

Desmond may have been the first to 'recover' from the effects of the Apple of Eden, but he was not the only one. Later that week, Rebecca checked the news stories on the 'ghost ship of Valencia' to find out which hospital the other Assassins had been taken to, leaving the two men alone at the safehouse with a stern warning that they were not to kill each other while she was out.

Clay turned his back for only a minute, and when he turned back Desmond was gone. He spent a good fifteen minutes searching the house before heading outside and spotting him on the roof, perfectly balanced on the ridge flashing and scanning the landscape carefully. Clay knew from his own experience that Desmond was using the vantage point to build up a mental map of the area, and figured that this was probably something he should do as well.

He sprinted towards the house and managed to sprint a couple of feet vertically up the side of it before grabbing the top of a window ledge and scrabbling up the rest of the way in under thirty seconds. When he reached the guttering and hauled himself onto the roof, however, he found that Desmond was already gone.

"Oh, I am _not_ playing this game," Clay muttered peevishly under his breath.

He proceeded to play that game for the remainder of the afternoon.

Desmond was found again by the river. Clay saw him from a distance and snuck up on him so quietly that he practically stopped breathing, but as he reached out to touch Desmond's shoulder the man twisted away beneath his grasp, somehow ducked under his arm, and then he was behind Clay, giving him a small shove so that he got his feet wet in the river.

Another half hour of searching revealed Desmond calmly sipping coffee in the kitchen. Apparently 'Altaïr' had retained his body donor's tastes. Determined that they would hash this out over a dinner table and hot drinks if they had to, Clay turned away to flick the kettle back on. When he turned back again, both Desmond and his coffee were gone.

Outside on the lawn, he checked the roof, but Desmond wasn't there. He looked towards the river, but there was no silent figure on its banks. He was just contemplating going back inside the house when he heard a voice behind him.

"Why are you pursuing me?" Desmond asked in an even tone.

Clay turned and met his gaze challengingly. "Why are you running away?"

"These confrontations are getting us nowhere."

"So stop confronting me and start working with me."

"To what end?" Desmond didn't seem to be angry. He sounded more pitying that anything else. "You refuse to admit that I might be anyone other than Desmond, but I know that I am Altaïr. Are you willing to find a middle ground? I know that I'm not."

Clay took a couple of steps towards him, working hard to keep his frustration under wraps. "Listen to me. You are not Altaïr. Just because you have all his memories..."

"What is a man, but the sum of his memories?"

"More!" Clay shouted. "You're more than just a bunch of dusty old memories that have latched onto your brain! You're so much more than that. I know you, Desmond. I can see you in there, crazy as you are."

"You only see what you wish to see," Desmond replied, sadly. "I'm sorry I can't say more to help you."

Clay opened his mouth, but before he could respond there came the low rumble of an engine. They both turned their heads in time to see Rebecca pulling up with the car, several other figures clearly visible inside it. She climbed out of the car and saw the two of them.

"Clay?" she yelled. "Could you do me a favour and just ... scoot back a few feet?"

His feet obeyed before he could stop them. Clay moved further from the car, and away from Desmond, and watched as the rest of the car's doors opened and people began leaving it.

He saw their white faces, and the way that they shook in the sunlight, peered around fretfully, froze in terror when they saw him. It was not all of the Assassins he had hurt - only a fraction of them really. Bill Miles was not among them.

They stepped forward and gathered around Desmond with intrigued, pleading eyes.

"Is it true?" one of them whispered. "Are you him? Have you returned?"

Desmond reached out and laid a steadying hand upon the young woman's shoulder. "I am he," he said. "I have returned."

"Can you help us?" asked another Assassin.

Desmond smiled. "I can."

* * *

Several days had passed since the return of the Assassins. Clay found Desmond out by the river, cross-legged and deep in thought, his eyes fixed lazily on the rush of the water as he hummed softly to himself: a simple sound wave to focus his concentration. He glanced up when Clay moved in beside him, and rolled his eyes almost imperceptibly in exasperation.

"Relax, kid, I swear I won't bother you again after this," Clay said, settling down beside him on the dry bank.

"What else could you possibly have to say to me?" Desmond asked.

"Nothing. I have nothing to say to you, and you can feel free to tune me out. Carry on with your meditation or whatever. I just need you as, um, a sounding-post." Clay floundered temporarily as Desmond arched an eyebrow at him. "Look, I have some stuff that I needed to say to Desmond, but you're all I have. So just put up with me for a few more minutes, would you?"

Desmond looked at him for a moment, his annoyance turning visibly to curiosity. Then he shook it off and returned to contemplating the river once more. "Fine."

Clay took a deep breath, then began.

"Desmond. You know by now how I feel about you. That hasn't changed, but I've been mulling it over and the only conclusion I can come to is that ... maybe we just weren't ever meant to be together. It seems like ever since I met you all I've been doing is desperately trying to keep hold of you, or to pull you back from somewhere. From Abstergo, the Assassins, your dad, the coma, the bleeding effect, and now this. Sometimes I think that there was a shift in time or fate that pushed us together when we were never supposed to meet, and since then the universe has been trying to redress its mistake.

"I won't ever stop wanting you back, but it's gotten to the point now where I can't be sure that what I want is what's best, and it seems like it's always you who ends up getting hurt when I'm wrong. Maybe it was supposed to end up like this. Maybe the world needs Altaïr more than it needs you."

Desmond wasn't looking at the river any more. Clay could see in his peripheral vision that the man had turned to look at him, but he refused to look back. He needed to get through this.

"I, uh. Yeah. I'm gonna go now. I left the Apple with Rebecca, so that Altaïr can study it again, hopefully find something to help you guys.

"She told me, Rebecca told me, that I knew you better than anyone. I want to have kids some day, just so I can pass on all my memories of you. Maybe somewhere down the line, my descendants will use the Animus, and they'll get to know you like I did. They'll be real lucky bastards if they do."

He had intended it to end there, but Clay looked up and saw Desmond's face, puzzled and hesitant, and the next words broke free against his will.

"I'm going to miss you. I do miss you."

Clay stood up abruptly, knowing that he needed to get away now if he was to get away at all. The Piece of Eden throbbed in his arm and he felt golden lines break out all over his skin, lighting the nearby leaves on the trees. This time he didn't bother to pull the energy back; there was no one to hide it from any more.

Desmond was on his feet as well, but Clay couldn't bear to look at him. There was an awful, ugly pain in his chest as though something was physically and brutally being ripped out of him, compounding the thudding pressure of the Piece of Eden, and seeing Desmond's face shaken free of Altaïr's customary apathy and stoicism, enough to make him look like his old self again, would be more than Clay could survive.

"You are really leaving?" Desmond asked, as if he suspected a trick.

"Yeah. I'm really leaving."

"That is wise of you. It is for the best. Good luck to you, Clay Kaczmarek."

Looking down in disbelief, Clay saw that Desmond was holding out his hand. He choked back a laugh that sounded hideous, and turned away without touching Desmond. He walked with the very fluid in his veins burning and never glanced back.


	24. Chapter 24

**Introductory note**: _Aside from the epilogue (because I apparently can't do these stories without having an epilogue), this is the last chapter in Disparate. Hope you enjoyed it, and thanks for all the views and reviews._

* * *

Letting go of Desmond had been the hardest step, but not the trickiest. Clay had come to realise after what had happened on the boat that he was basically just a kid messing around with nuclear weapons when it came to the artefacts left behind by Those Who Came Before. He'd had the illusion of control with the Apple, but an illusion was all it was, and a dangerous one at that. Until he had a better understanding of what these things did, and what their true purpose was, he needed to stop using them.

So long as it wasn't too late.

Clay returned to Valencia and tracked down the hospital where Bill and the others had been taken. They hadn't yet been moved to a specialist psychiatric hospital, and probably wouldn't be until the doctors had finished running all the usual medical tests, and so Clay headed to the psych ward and began peering into rooms and scanning beds.

He eventually found the Assassins, all grouped together in one room. It was strange to see Bill among them: for some reason Clay had expected to find him in a private room, as though the hospital staff should have somehow been able to recognise his leadership status even while catatonic. There he was, though. Still and quiet, eyes open and staring vacantly at the ceiling.

Knowing he was short on time, Clay stepped over to Bill's bed and pulled the curtain around to hide them both from prying eyes. Hesitantly, he dragged his gaze over to Bill's face and forced himself to _really_ look and to face the consequences of what he'd done. He reached out to touch Bill's arm, but then changed his mind and rested his hand on the guardrail instead.

"Hey, Bill," he said hoarsely, clearing his throat before continuing. "I don't know if talking is going to do you any good. I mean, it never seemed to with ... Anyway. I'm sorry. I regret this. I was angry at you, I still am, but that doesn't excuse this. I ... the reason I was so angry was because ... I loved you, Bill. I really did. In some ways I still think you're a great man. But when you abandoned me, I..."

Clay suddenly shook his head, angrily. This wasn't about him any more.

"I want you to know that I don't hate you. I hope you get better. I hope that one day I'll get the chance to try to earn your forgiveness. Your son is OK now. I mean, he's confused but he's ... strong."

Clay turned away from the bed and drew the curtain back. His heart sank as he looked around the room and saw all the other Assassins lying stiff and broken in their beds. They hadn't even been his target, yet here they were. The collateral damage of his own arrogance and stupidity. Didn't they each deserve a bedside apology? God, he didn't even know most of their names.

He couldn't dwell here. It wouldn't do any good.

It was quite a long walk between the psych ward and A&E, and along the way Clay felt his heart thudding harder in his chest. The Piece of Eden in his arm itched as though it was aware of what he was about to do, but he ignored it, focused on keeping the power drawn back from the shroud of his skin, on keeping himself vulnerable. He found the disabled bathroom closest to A&E and locked himself in it.

There was a red emergency cord next to the toilet, and Clay seated himself on the floor within arm's reach of it. He then reached into the backpack he had brought along and drew the scalpel out of it. He pressed it to the soft underbelly of his right forearm and ... hesitated.

_Fuck_._ Fuck_._ OK_.

This was the tricky part.

Clay was devastated and miserable, but he didn't want to die. If nothing else, it would be a selfish waste of the chance Desmond had given him when he'd freed them both from Abstergo. He'd been given back the gift of his full lifetime and he intended to live it out, for better or for worse. His plans in Abstergo, his attempted suicide in the cell - these had been acts of a desperate man, a man who didn't believe he would survive otherwise and wanted to end things on his own terms. Now he wanted to go on. He wanted to make a stab at living without Desmond, perhaps even (the very thought hurt right now) find someone else to settle down with one day. He wanted to spend time with his parents and make up for all the years he had spent away from them. He wanted to try to do some _good_ to atone for all the bad he had done.

This was different. Clay needed to cut the Piece of Eden out of his arm. It couldn't stay there, not if he really intended to make a fresh start with a clear head. The downside to this plan was that he didn't know what would happen if he cut it out. It could just be a messy wound that needed stitching, or all the injuries he had sustained that had been fixed by the artefact could return and leave him little more than a bloodied pile of pulp for the cleaners to mop up.

Like the whispers of an incubus, his mind began to justify the option of backing out. _What harm could it do? This artefact has only ever helped you. It would be a lot easier to achieve your goals if you were invulnerable. What if one of your parents gets ill and you need to heal them? Surely it's better to..._

"Nice try," Clay muttered. He held out his right arm, raised his left hand, and drove the scalpel downwards.

* * *

**August 2014**

The headlines didn't understand what was happening, but they gave the clues anyway. So small that you wouldn't have been able to notice them if you weren't looking very carefully. It was stories like these which had first piqued Shaun Hastings' curiosity about the possibility of a historical rivalry that had been brought all the way into the present. If you chased these clues far enough, you might be amazed what you might find. Just don't be sure that you'll be able to make it out of the rabbit hole at the end of it all.

A page 12 report of new buildings built upon the rubble of those which had been destroyed in the terrorist attacks. Buildings that seemed to be occupied, but whose owners were shrouded in secrecy. A United States senator killed, the only fatality, in a multi-car pile-up on the freeway. A strange triangular symbol lost amidst the patterns of graffiti walls all over the world that didn't seem to belong to any known gang. An Abstergo CEO dying of an apparent drug overdose in his high-security penthouse apartment. Every now and then a man or woman would grow suddenly secretive, begin spending more time away from their friends and families, and not say where they had been no matter how many cuts or bruises they came back with.

Amongst it all were tales of innocents saved and corruption exposed. Injustice averted, apparently by chance or accident. Slyly inserted clauses in government legislature were highlighted and published anonymously on the internet to be found and cried out against by the public.

No one really talked about vigilantism, no more than usual anyway. There always seemed to be some other element in each story to distract from the question of who had engineered it in the first place.

There was one image that went viral for a short while, mainly on hipster blogs and extreme sports forums. It was picture of unidentified source, presumed by many to be either photoshopped or part of some lost advertising campaign. It showed a man, apparently a young man, standing on a ledge atop the Bank of America building in New York. The picture had been taken from a distance and the man was wearing a white jacket with a hood that obscured his face in shadow, but he seemed to be looking down on the city with intent, like some kind of bird of prey, using the vantage point to spot the frightened fieldmice trying to scurry back into their safety zones.

In late 2013, Abstergo Industries' stocks fell sharply, almost overnight. No one could really explain it, but other companies didn't hesitate to seize upon the moment of weakness and build up their own list of clients. Abstergo started to recover, in a slow and stilted way, but it was too late. The gap in the market had been filled, and they were struggling against a tide, working like hell just to get even a little bit close to the monolith that they had been before.

You probably wouldn't have pieced it together if you weren't watching.

Clay Kaczmarek was watching.

He kept track of it all: in files on his computer, in newspaper cuttings that he kept in a hidden drawer in his desk, in news segments that he recorded on the TV in his apartment. Working as a freelance programmer, Clay spent a lot of his time in front of a screen, and he was never too far from a news source. If something of interest happened, he was usually the first one to spot it.

"Don't get why you watch all that stuff," Harold Kaczmarek would mutter gruffly as he watched his son's eyes fix on the TV screen, grow suddenly very focused as the breath slowed in his chest. "It's just depressing." Clay would look admonished for a moment or two, return to the meal that he had made, something that the two of them shared fortnightly now that Clay lived so close.

The kid had shown up on Harold's doorstep again a couple of years ago, looking weary and travel-worn and, as usual, refusing to give specifics about where he had been and what had happened to him. Harold had yelled at him a lot. He had been angry and stressed already, because on top of the goddamn business continuing to go south and his ex calling him up for one of her "friendly catch-up" talks, the damn dog had started pissing on the floor a few days ago and, shortly after, had stopped getting up from his bed at all. He would just lie there, sorrow-eyed and and huffing deep, tired breaths as Harold tried to force food and water into him.

"Since you're here, you can take over babysitting duties," had been his last snapped remark before he slammed into his bedroom.

He'd come down the next morning and found Clay in the den, still fully-clothed, with the dog in his lap. It was dead. Clay's face was buried in the animal's fur and he was shaking with dry sobs, dehydrated with how long he had been crying.

Harold had stood there - fists clenched - feeling impotent, angry, bewildered, and even a little bit regretful. Eventually he'd said, "I didn't know you liked the damn mutt so much."

* * *

It was a Sunday. Clay spent the morning finishing up an interesting project for a client (it would be in before the deadline, like most stuff he worked on) and decided to take the rest of the day off. He checked the usual sources for clues about what the Assassins might be up to. There wasn't too much out there, nothing that was easy to find. Type the name 'Desmond Miles' into a search engine and all you'd find would be Facebook and Twitter profiles for teenagers and middle-aged accountants and the odd actor or singer. He was there, though. He was between the lines. He was in the subtext. He was everywhere.

Today, though, Clay couldn't find anything that he felt was really evidence of Assassin activity. With a small sense of disappointment, he walked to the door of his apartment, intending to go out and get some air.

His hand was upon the door handle when the intercom buzzed: someone downstairs, requesting entry.

Clay tensed. He didn't get a lot of personal visits, and his dad always called before showing up. Thinking about the gun and the knife that he kept in his desk, and the other gun under his pillow, he reached for the the receiver and lifted it to his ear.

"Hello."

"Clay. It's me, Altaïr."

The voice punched him in the chest and suddenly all the colour seemed to drain out of the world. Clay was silent for a full five seconds before he managed to unstick his throat and said, "Yeah, OK, come up." He pressed the release button and stepped back from the door, walking backwards until his thighs touched the back of the sofa and he rested his weight upon it, perched, staring at the door as though he expected it to come to life and attack him.

It wasn't long before the knock came and Clay quickly fixed a neutral expression onto his face before walking over and opening the door until the chain went taught. He saw a glimpse of brown skin, of cropped dark hair, of a scarred mouth and slammed the door again almost in panic, taking a deep breath before removing the chain and opening it.

God.

He hadn't changed. He hadn't changed _at all_. Why hadn't he changed? He should look like a completely different person. This was sick.

"I hope I'm not interrupting," Desmond said softly.

Clay stood aside. "You're not. Come in, Altaïr."

The man stepped over the threshold, keeping that intense gaze fixed on Clay's face for a moment before flicking it briefly around the modest apartment and its furnishings. He was wearing a grey hooded jacket trimmed with red, subtle but strong pads on the elbows, the hood lying flat against his back. His hands were mostly covered by fingerless gloves, the palms of them dressed in in a high-friction coating that allowed for a better grip. Clay knew that he would be carrying concealed weapons, could spot the very slight bulge on the inside of his arm where the hidden blade rested, but Desmond looked no different than anyone else on the street. In a crowd he would be invisible.

"I'm surprised it took you this long to show up," Clay said conversationally, walking over to the wall safe and entering the 8-digit combination, one which he changed on a weekly basis. The safe hissed open and he reached inside for the small lead box.

Desmond was frowning a little when Clay walked back over to him, He took the box when it was handed to him and opened it, staring down at the Piece of Eden inside.

"Take it. It's probably safer with you, anyway." Clay scanned Desmond's face, took note of the hint of puzzlement there. "What? You didn't think I'd give it up so easily." No, that wasn't it, Desmond looked as though he was struggling to articulate something. "Oh. You didn't come here for the artefact."

"No," Desmond said, staring at the small golden feather, his voice distant.

"So why _did_ you come here?"

Desmond took a few seconds before he finally looked back up at Clay, the uncertainty gone from his face now. "I was in the area, recruiting a few promising young citizens that we've had our eyes on for a while. It occurred to me that while I was here, I should reach out to you as well. You were a great asset to the Assassins once..."

"No."

Desmond raised his chin, a little defensively. "Won't you hear me out?"

"I want to save you the effort. I'm done with the Assassins, permanently."

The left side of Desmond's mouth lifted fractionally in response. "Really? You seem to be taking a keen interest in our activities."

"You spying on me?"

"You wouldn't believe some of the technical geniuses we have working for us. They keep an eye on the stories that reference us, however obliquely, and they keep track of who else is reading them. Your IP address kept coming up."

"I use IP shields..."

"That just makes you stand out more."

"Keeping an eye on you doesn't mean I'm on your side. Haven't you people learned that I'm not to be trusted yet?"

Desmond didn't reply to that. He had been distracted by movement on the sofa. "You have a pet."

"Eich."

The tabby cat yawned in a very bored manner, eyed Desmond disdainfully with his yellow eyes, and promptly went back to sleep. Eich wasn't exactly a people-feline. He wriggled free irritably if you tried to pick him up and seemed to consider signs of affection to be signs of weakness. Clay liked the creature: he hadn't wanted another dog after Hank died and Eich was a good companion so long you were quite liberal with your definition of companionship.

"You want coffee? I hate to think of you coming all the way out here for such a short conversation."

"I was in the area," Desmond repeated, but he walked into the kitchen anyway, still casting his eyes about the apartment with hawk-like efficiency.

Clay didn't follow him at first. He took a moment to let down his mask, to scrub a hand over his eyes, to try to deal with the idea what Desmond Miles had just walked into Clay's kitchen and was about to drink his coffee. He needed to remember - he was losing grip - of the fact that this was not Desmond any more. It was Desmond's shell wrapped around the steady, fierce, lethal stoicism of Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad's mind. Over the years he'd had to force himself to come to terms with that, or go mad with the torment of _what if_.

After finally following the Assassin into the kitchen, Clay made coffee without asking how Desmond took it. The man in question had seated himself at the small table where Clay ate his meals and occasionally shared them with his father. He had friends, who were really little more than fellow programmers who he kept in regular contact, but he never invited them over. He'd been through a period a few months ago when he'd tried dating again, but dating had never turned into more than casual sex and one night stands. Mainly younger men, men who he'd kiss aggressively, and hold down while he fucked them, eyes closed, focusing on the physical pleasure and trying to pretend it was intimacy. He'd leave the next morning and not call them again, and they rarely called him either. He'd stopped all this weeks ago: he just didn't need it.

When Clay slid Desmond's mug over to him, he found the man staring into the lead box at the Piece of Eden. "I didn't know you'd managed to remove it," he said at last. "That's why we never came for it before. We didn't want to take it from you forcefully."

Clay nodded in understanding, taking a seat opposite Desmond. "I cut it out right after I left you." The memories of blood and the ragged edges of flesh and how _good_ it had all felt threatened to rise to the surface of his mind and he pushed them back down. "It was something I needed to do."

"Did it hurt?"

Clay met Desmond's gaze. "Like hell."

"Another scar for the collection, I suppose."

There was no point in showing him. There was no point. Why would he care? He'd probably just look at Clay pityingly, or with scorn. There was no point...

Clay rolled his shirt-sleeve up to the elbow laid his forearm, wrist-up, on the table.

Desmond made no noise of reaction, but he looked down at the arm and his gaze seem to stick there. Without taking his eyes off it, he used his right hand to roll up the left sleeve of his jacket before laying his own limb down onto the table, parallel to Clay's.

Aside from the difference in the skin tone beneath them, the two tattoos looked like twins. The long, ugly scar on the inside of Clay's arm was almost completely hidden in the complex symmetry of the black patterns. He smiled a little, sadly, as he watched Desmond's eyes flicker between the two.

"I hated looking at that scar," Clay explained. "I wanted to cover it with something better. I always liked Desmond's tattoo."

"You drew the design..."

"From memory. I must have seen it a million times. I used to study it sometimes while he was asleep."

This was strange. Desmond was looking at him again, but it wasn't scorn in his eyes, nor pity. It was some other emotion: something troubled and pained and discomfited. Clay found himself speaking on.

"I'm kind of glad I did it, and kind of not. Sometimes I still open my eyes in the mornings, and if I'm not quite awake yet and I don't remember everything, I think it's y- I think it's Desmond's arm. It feels like I never left, like he's still right here, and I just get this rush of happiness that's so good it's actually worth the comedown when I remember that he's gone."

He knew that he was oversharing, losing his indifference, but he didn't care. He didn't care what Altaïr fucking Ibn-La'Ahad thought of him. The man had chosen to come here, chosen to enter Clay's home and to stay and to ask questions. If looking at Clay's tattoo made him uncomfortable, then all the better. Maybe he would stay away permanently after this.

"I wasn't in the area."

Desmond was looking deep into Clay's eyes, looking as though the words had left his mouth against his will, but he didn't waver. He continued.

"I was in California, and then I drove all the way up here in a couple of days. We're recruiting, yes, but no one in this area right now. I didn't come here to recruit you, either. You were right; you're far from an ideal candidate for recruitment, no matter how useful you've been in the past."

"Then what are you doing here?"

Desmond looked back down at their tattoos one last time before withdrawing his arm, crossing it with his other, pulling them both close to his chest before looking up at Clay with a raw, almost unrecognisable expression.

"I think about you ... constantly," he admitted, his voice ragged as though the confession of it was painful.

Clay searched for a response to this. "Just recently?" he asked.

Desmond shook his head.

"Since I left you in Spain?"

Desmond nodded. "At first I was relieved. You were a distraction, a liability. I was sure things would be easier with you gone, and they were, I suppose. I left Spain, came back here to America and began to rebuild the Assassins. I began to make us what we once were. But I couldn't forget you. You were in my dreams, all these memories of you and Desmond and everything you had ever shared, and every thought he had ever had about you when you weren't around. Even during the day I would find myself thinking about you, wondering where you were, what you were doing. I diverted resources to track you down, to keep a watch on you.

"Last year, when you started working again under your own name, Abstergo found you and planned to bring you in for questioning, to return to work in the Animus. They sent a team, five of their best-trained agents. I sent Assassins to intercept them. I was with them. We slaughtered Abstergo's agents, and the team of twenty that they sent after that. They didn't try again. They had more important things to focus on, and they didn't want to keep wasting agents. You never knew about any of this."

It wasn't a question, but Clay felt like some kind of reaction was needed from him. "No."

"I don't know why I'm here. I don't know why I'm telling you this. I don't even know who I am any more."

Desmond covered his mouth with his hand after the last statement, looking as though he expected Clay to yell at him in indignation.

He didn't yell. He waited for Desmond to continue and, when he didn't, prompted him to do so. "Are you saying that you think you might be Desmond?"

"No," Desmond replied firmly. "I am Altaïr."

"How do you know?"

"Because the Assassins need me to be Altaïr."

Clay laughed. He didn't mean to, but it hadn't been the reason he was expecting. "Is that it?"

"Of course not. I still mourn Maria, and Malik, and all my friends and comrades. I miss Masyaf, I ache for her in my heart. I can still remember my childhood, my parents, and my training, and I know that these memories are my own. This world is not the one I grew up in, and I struggle to fit in here. And yet ... Maria and Malik are gone, but you are still here, and I feel an ache for you in my heart. What is that? It is not just a memory."

"No," Clay confirmed softly.

"I have led the Assassins to countless victories. Desmond would not have been able to do that. I have become a symbol now. I am the leader who returned from the grave to smite our enemies, to breathe new life into the Brotherhood. My faith is unswerved where Desmond's was weak, my resolve certain, my belief in the Creed absolute."

"But you don't believe in yourself?"

Desmond opened his mouth to deny this, and then closed it again. He seemed more passive now, held in Clay's mercy, waiting for a judgement and a sentence.

"What do you feel, looking at me now?" Clay asked, trying to keep his voice even.

"I feel safe," Desmond replied, slowly and introspectively. "I feel anchored and grounded."

"What else?"

"I feel ... something. You know what. Don't make me name it, not now."

"OK, I won't. What do you want to do, when you look at me?"

"I want to kiss you." Desmond looked taken aback by his own words, but not afraid.

"What else?"

"I want to do more than just kiss you."

"Right. Anything else?"

"I want to stay with you. The thought of leaving again pains me."

Clay turned all this over in his mind. At last he said, "You know, Altaïr, this might not mean anything. It might just be vestigial crap left over in Desmond's brain. You seemed pretty convinced of who you were last time we spoke. Why don't you just try to fight it?"

"Because I don't want to fight it."

Clay's temper reared up, suddenly and violently and taking him by surprise. "Well what the fuck _do_ you want? Why are you here? What you expect _me_ to do about any of this?"

The reply come in dull, hopeless tones. "I expect nothing of you. I desired only to surrender myself to you, to have one decision that was no longer in my hands. Perhaps that is unfair, but there it is. Turn me away, and I'll go. I won't come back. I'll attempt to overcome this challenge and focus on my work with the Assassins, find peace through meditation and discipline. Ask me to stay, and I will stay, and explore whatever this is."

The outrage and indignation and fury roared in Clay's chest. The version of himself that had come out of Abstergo would probably have punched Desmond in the face before he'd finished speaking. Failing that, he would be dripping scorn and bile, the most sarcastic and spiteful words he could think of to lash out with all the pain of the last few years and make Desmond feel it, watch that same pain blossom on his face so that Clay could enjoy the feeling of righteousness and justice. Desmond would leave, Clay would slam the door behind him, and convince himself that he'd won some kind of victory. It would feel so _good_, for a little while.

Desmond waited, like a man before a firing squad, a kind of deep-seated misery visible in his eyes where it hadn't been before. Slowly, Clay uncurled the fist that was still on the table, the fist that he hadn't noticed clenching, and extended his hand across the smooth surface towards Desmond.

The younger man watched the movement before slowly, hesitantly, reaching out with his own tattooed arm once more. Finally, tentatively, in the manner of a mouse testing its weight on the trigger of a trap, he slid his cool fingers over Clay's warm palm until their hands rested together. Clay closed his fingers over Desmond's and realised that his anger wasn't around any more.

"Stay," he said.

Desmond grinned.


	25. Epilogue

_I stood with the Dead, so forsaken and still:_  
_When dawn was grey I stood with the Dead. _  
_And my slow heart said, 'You must kill, you must kill:_  
_'Soldier, soldier, morning is red'._

- Siegfried Sassoon

* * *

**January 2020**

Altaïr Ibn'La-Ahad cursed as he saw the last member of his team fall in a graceful arching of limbs and a spray of blood. He ducked down behind the wall of cubicle and felt the soft breeze of a bullet whizzing past his ear a split second before he took cover. Oh, how he missed the days when all he'd had to worry about were arrows and swords.

He held the device with the information upon it, all that they had come here for, clenched tightly in his left hand, and used the brief moment of cover to slip it into the inside pocket of his jacket. On a mission like this, at the very heart of one of the Templar's strongholds, he hadn't dared to bring the Apple along. He had a gun, and his hidden blade of course, but as soon as the alarm had sounded the guards had seemed to descent upon him in their dozens. Altaïr had brought four other Assassins along with him - good men and women - and they were all dead now. He was the last one left, crouched here, with enemies closing in on all sides. He heard them shout, and began crawling, head ducked low, along the rows of cubicles, past the many Animi held here.

Altaïr had been born in one of these - born again, anyhow. Perhaps if he died here today, it would be fitting.

Not that this was any reason to do so.

Drawing his gun with his right hand and triggering the hidden blade on his left, he gripped the edge of a partition for leverage and swung his body up, plunging the blade deep into the body of the guard who had been about to round the corner. Heart's blood dripped down his arm as the man gurgled and fell, but Altaïr only shook him off impatiently. Taking a moment to centre himself, to aim, he emptied the rest of his clip into the guards and when it clicked quiet there were still too many of them there. Worse still, he had felt a bullet punch through his jeans and graze his thigh.

Retreating back along the row, Altaïr clamped his left hand over the wound to staunch the flow of blood. When he was a good distance away he stopped, breathed for a moment, and watched the red liquid flow over his hand, his fingers, and over the modest band of gold that adorned one of them.

_"It feels strange."_

_"Stranger than having no finger at all?"_

_"Different."_

_"'Different'. I love you, kid. Promise me you'll come back."_

_"I always do."_

Clay. Oh God, Clay. What Altaïr would not give to keep that promise now. He remembered with crisp, precise detail how Clay had looked just after the ceremony, just before they'd parted: his hair that was starting to streak with grey and the quick, brave quirk of his rare smile. Altaïr thought about Clay waiting forever, about what would happen if he realised that the return would never come.

A bullet thudded into the wall just beyond Altaïr's head and jerked him away from his memories. He slammed a new clip of bullets into his gun and continued his stilted journey towards their entry point: the window in the ground floor office which had been carefully dismantled, the glass laid down on the ground outside. If he could only make it that far, then the journey wouldn't have been for nothing.

He could do it. He was stronger now. When he'd first woken up alone in this body, it had still been so weak, and it had seemed to take forever to build up Desmond's strength to a place that Altaïr felt comfortable with. This body, this man he'd become, would be thirty-three in a couple of months, if he lived that long. Eight years since Spain. Six since he'd returned to Clay with his confession: that he was no longer sure of who he was, this unprecedented entity of an ancestor trapped inside a descendant, both of them somehow alive in the same space.

He'd come to Clay in the hope of a final judgement: someone to tell him, truly, whether he was Altaïr or Desmond. He'd never found that answer, but Clay had finally said that it didn't really matter.

_"Call yourself whatever name you want to, but if you ever begin to doubt who you are, just come back here."_

_"I can't promise I'll be here all the time. I can't. The Assassins..."_

_"I know. I understand. Just ... whenever you're able to."_

_"It's not enough."_

_"Desmond..."_

_"Marry me. If we're married we will be bound together truly. If one of us leaves this world before the other, we'll be able to find each other always. Even in the darkness."_

_"Is that what you want? Really?"_

_"Yes."_

_"Fine. You already know what my answer is."_

Altaïr - Desmond - whoever he was - gritted his teeth into a fierce grin and surged forward. He leaned against the wall, dragging himself along it as he staggered and ran, blindly firing at those in his wake whilst moving ever onward towards his goal. Perhaps he would make it this time. Perhaps he wouldn't. But they would see each other again either way.

It was fate.


	26. THE EXODUS

Greetings, all readers of my fics.

I should start by saying that this isn't actually a new chapter. Sorry if I got your hopes up/filled you with dread at the possibility of my adding a postscript where Desmond and Clay get divorced and then die horribly and painfully.

Actually, this is just a note to say that I'm moving over to Archive Of Our Own (their system makes it much easier to edit stories and they have higher caps for the amount of smut you can include in a fic. Also, I like their font.)

I originally planned to just copy-paste all of my fics over there, but then I reread very old fics like Thirty-Three and thought, "Urgh, this is bad." So part of the move is a sprucing up/rewrite of all existing fics to remove typos, malapropisms, Freudian slips, continuity errors and really bad metaphors, and to add additional details, dialogue, chapter titles, character introspection etc.

Hopefully it won't take too long since the hard work of actually writing the damn things is already done.

My username over at AO3 is devovitsuasartes. I removed the 'que' because I found another version of _Metamorphoses_ (the source of the quote) where it wasn't there, and figured that maybe Ovid removed it as part of his own editing process. Maybe he was just sitting around in ancient Rome stroking his laurel wreath and reading his old poetry going, "Urgh, this is bad." Or maybe it just varies from one publication to another.

I was actually on DeviantArt the other day and found fanart for one of the older fics, which was awesome and scary and unbelievably flattering. If you're an artist and you have any fanart of the series that you'd be willing for me to link to in the appropriate chapters, please send me a PM either on here or on AO3.

Dat's all, folks.


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